Michael J Kane, 
University of North Carolina, Greenboro

Does the regulation of thought draw on the same cognitive abilities as the regulation of external distraction, action, and memory? This talk will review a program of laboratory, classroom, and daily-life research in which my colleagues, students, and I have explored normal and atypical variation in mind wandering, its complex and context-dependent relationship with executive control and memory abilities, its possible costs for reading comprehension and conceptual learning from lectures, and its possible benefits for creative and future-oriented thinking.