Mindfulness, Anxiety, Mind Wandering, and Self-Reported Cognitive Functioning: A Latent Variable Examination

We examined the impact of dispositional mindfulness on self-reported anxiety, mind wandering, and cognitive functioning across multiple samples. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the factors had moderate to strong correlations with each other. Specifically, self-reported mindfulness was associated with less anxiety and mind wandering and better cognitive functioning. Further, structural equation models indicated that while mindfulness has a direct impact on anxiety, ,mind wandering, and cognitive functioning, the impact on cognitive functioning was mediated by self-reported mind wandering. In an MTurk sample collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, mindfulness did not predict anxiety, mind wandering or cognitive functioning. However, mind wandering mediated the relationship between anxiety and cognitive functioning. The results will be discussed in terms of the impact of dispositional mindfulness on self-reported cognitive functioning