Mindwandering While Reading Not Only Reduces Science Learning But Also Increases Content Misunderstandings

More frequent mindwandering has been shown to reduce overall text comprehension. However, are mindwanders also more likely to generate incorrect associations based on what they have read? This question is especially critical for science learning, as errors in understanding can resonate through future learning efforts. Across 2 experiments, participants read a science text and were asked to generate a causal essay response related to the text, in addition to completing a sentence recognition test. Participants who reported more mindwandering not only demonstrated lower levels of correct understanding overall, but also included more misunderstandings in their essay responses. Mediational analyses suggest that the production of misunderstandings was tied to less available correct knowledge, and not demand characteristics at time of test. The results from these experiments suggest that mindwandering does not just prohibit correct memory for text, but also produces a negative learning effect in the form of textual misunderstanding.