Studying Maladaptive Daydreaming’s Impact on Impulsivity

Abstract

Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) involves compulsive and obsessive daydreaming where fantasies are complex and can be resumed and paused at will. This study used the maladaptive daydreaming scale -16 (Somer, Soffer-Dudek, Ross, et al., 2017; MDS-16) and the immediate and delayed memory tasks (Dougherty et al., 2002; IMT/DMT) to measure maladaptive daydreamer's impulsiveness. Although 157 participants began the task, only 13 completed it entirely. Data analysis showed that those with a high MDS-16 score show high impulsivity; however, there were no participants that scored below a 50 on the MDS-16 scale, resulting in no MD/Non-MD comparison groups.