(From Science Daily) When your mind drifts, it’s hard to remember what was going on before you stopped paying attention. Now a new study has found that the effect is stronger when your mind drifts farther — to memories of an overseas vacation instead of a domestic trip, for example, or a memory in the more distant past.

Psychologists have known for a while that context is important to remembering. If you leave the place where a memory was made — its context — it will be harder for you to recall the memory. Previous studies had also found that thinking about something else — daydreaming or mind-wandering — blocks access to memories of the recent past. Psychological scientists Peter F. Delaney and Lili Sahakyan of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Colleen M. Kelley and Carissa A. Zimmerman of Florida State University wanted to know if the content of your daydreams affects your ability to access a recently-acquired memory.

Read more here: Remembering to Forget: The Amnesic Effect of Daydreaming