Involuntary mental time travel occurrences: Differences between self-caught and probe-caught paradigms

Involuntary mental time travel refers to the spontaneous reliving of past events or the envisioning of future scenarios without conscious effort. We explored the phenomenological characteristics, temporal directions, and contents of self-caught and probe-caught spontaneous thoughts, with a focus on involuntary mental time travel. Self-caught and probe-caught paradigms differ in the level of meta-awareness they demand, which may affect the nature of the captured thoughts. Additionally, we investigated the influence of attentional load on these characteristics and examined the association between involuntary mental time travel and participants' Beck Depression Inventory scores. Participants engaged in self-caught and probe-caught paradigms to report their spontaneous thoughts while performing a vigilance task under high or low attentional load. Results indicated self-caught thoughts to be significantly more self-relevant compared to probe-caught thoughts, highlighting the role of meta-awareness in reported thoughts. Contrary to expectations, attentional load did not influence the phenomenological qualities of thoughts. Additionally, no significant correlations were found between Beck Depression Inventory scores and thought characteristics, potentially due to limited variance in depressive symptoms within our sample. These findings contribute to the understanding of how different methodologies capture the contents of spontaneous thoughts.