Introduction
SAID
Have you ever been in the situation where, during a conference talk, you realize that you cannot remember a word the keynote speaker said because you were thinking about your personal issues? This fundamentally human mental state that arises from our inner stream of consciousness is called mind wandering (MW) and occurs when your mind stops being in the present moment. Generally, MW reflects the disengagement of attentional focus from the environment toward self-generated thoughts unrelated to the activity at handContrary to what this description of MW suggests, its operationalization and theoretical definition are the subject of lively debateSo far, MW has been mainly associated with major cognitive disagreementsProspective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute previously formulated intentions, after a variable interval occupied by an ongoing activityTo our knowledge, few studies have directly investigated the links between MW and PMThe objective of this study was to investigate the causal link between MW and PM. More specifically, we tested the differentiated impact of MW temporal orientation (past or future) during the retention interval on PM performances, in an ecological setting. We wanted to replicate our previous findings concerning the predictive role of past-oriented thoughts on PM performancesWe chose to use virtual reality (VR) as on optimal compromise between traditional laboratory PM tasks and real life-based approaches, which have given rise to heterogeneous results. The former lack ecological validity, while the latter are particularly far from the situations encountered in daily life