Involuntary remembering and ADHD: Do individuals with ADHD symptoms experience high volumes of involuntary memories in everyday life?

Spontaneous mind wandering has been implicated as a feature of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and researchers have wondered if spontaneous remembering is also a feature of ADHD. In this study, we compared spontaneous cognition, principally involuntary autobiographical memories, in participants who scored inside the ADHD range on BAARS-IV to those who scored outside of the ADHD range. In Study 1, participants reported their involuntary memories and spontaneous thoughts on a laboratory measure of involuntary memory (the vigilance task), as well as estimated their daily involuntary memory frequencies on a separate questionnaire.