Absentmindedness

Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior. It can have three different causes: Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior. It can have three different causes: Absent-mindedness is a mental condition in which the subject experiences low levels of attention and frequent distraction. Absent-mindedness is not a diagnosed condition but rather a state people experience in their daily lives from a variety of different causes including boredom, sleepiness, or focus on internal thoughts instead of external surroundings. When suffering from absent-mindedness, people tend to show signs of memory lapse and weak recollection of recently occurring events. This can usually be a result of a variety of other conditions often diagnosed by clinicians such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. In addition to absent-mindedness leading to an array of consequences affecting daily life, it can have more severe, long-term problems. Absent-mindedness seemingly consists of lapses of concentration or 'zoning out'. This can result in lapses of short or long term memory, depending on when the person in question was in a state of absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness also relates directly to lapses in attention. Schachter and Dodsen say, that in the context of memory, “absent-mindedness entails inattentive or shallow processing that contributes to weak memories of ongoing events or forgetting to do things in the future”. Though absent-mindedness is a frequent occurrence, there has been little progress made on what the direct causes of absent-mindedness are. However, it tends to co-occur with ill health, preoccupation, and distraction.