Bored, distracted, and forgetful: The impact of mind wandering and boredom on memory encoding.

Mind wandering, defined as focusing attention towards task-unrelated thoughts, is a common mental state known to impair memory encoding. This phenomenon is closely linked to boredom. Very few studies, however, have tested the potential impact of boredom on memory encoding. Thus, the present study aimed at manipulating mind wandering and boredom during an incidental memory encoding task, to test their differential impact on memory encoding. Thirty-two participants performed a variant of the