Daydreaming and dissociation move together in maladaptive daydreaming, not ADHD

Immersive daydreaming and dissociation rise and fall together more tightly in people with maladaptive daydreaming (MD) than in people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to an open-access experience-sampling study published in BMC Psychology by Nitzan Theodor-Katz and Nirit Soffer-Dudek. The finding supports the notion that the momentary dynamics of MD are distinguished from ADHD distractibility, even though both conditions involve attention shifting inward at the expense of actively pursuing personal goals.

Maladaptive daydreaming is a clinical condition marked by recurring, prolonged episodes of daydreaming that cause distress and impair everyday functioning. Researchers have often framed it as a dissociative syndrome of pathological “absorption and imaginative involvement,” driven by escapism. MD shares a troublesome outcome with ADHD — impaired attention — but the two syndromes differ in character: MD is characterized by immersive daydreaming, while ADHD is characterized by mind wandering. Previous studies supported the separateness of the two conditions, but they had not compared how the syndromes unfold moment to moment.

The new study asked whether momentary elevations in the motivation to daydream and in immersive daydreaming are accompanied by heightened dissociative characteristics — specifically absorption and detachment — and whether this dynamic distinguishes people with MD from people with ADHD. The team used experience sampling, in which participants rate their states repeatedly in daily life. Four groups were diagnosed through a clinical interview: an ADHD group (n = 35), an MD group (n = 48), a combined ADHD plus MD group (n = 33), and a control group (n = 35). Each group was predominantly female, and the MD groups were significantly younger than the non-MD groups, with mean ages of 29.4 for the MD group, 30.8 for the combined group, 37.1 for controls, and 39.9 for the ADHD group. Across five days, participants rated their daydreaming and dissociation levels four times a day, producing a dense record of momentary dynamics in each person’s natural environment.

The results showed that immersive daydreaming and the desire to daydream fluctuated in tandem with increased dissociation, encompassing both absorption and detachment. When participants were swept up in vivid, immersive fantasy — or felt a strong pull to enter it — they simultaneously reported greater dissociative experience. This momentary coupling held across the sample, but the researchers were most interested in whether it differed between the clinical groups.

An expected interaction effect indeed emerged: the coupling of immersive daydreaming with dissociation was more pronounced in the MD group compared to the ADHD group. For people with maladaptive daydreaming, the moments of deepest immersive fantasy were also moments of heightened dissociative involvement, whereas daydreaming episodes in ADHD were not accompanied by the same dissociative intensification. The finding supports the view that MD is a distinct phenomenon rather than simply severe distractibility.

The picture became more nuanced when the researchers focused specifically on the desire to daydream, and when they compared the clinical groups against controls. Under these conditions, the interaction effects were limited to absorption and did not extend to detachment. The urge to daydream appears to be tied to dissociative absorption rather than to detachment, indicating that the two dissociative characteristics behave differently in relation to daydreaming motivation in the momentary data.

Overall, the study bolsters the separateness of MD and ADHD, conditions that are sometimes confused because both involve attention impairment. While both involve attention shifting inward, the momentary architecture differs: in MD, immersive daydreaming and dissociation rise and fall together in a tightly coupled pattern, whereas in ADHD this coupling is weaker. The experience-sampling approach adds weight to the conclusion, because it captures the syndromes as they occur in daily life.

The demographic profile of the sample — predominantly female participants and significantly younger MD groups — reflects the recruitment of the study and should be kept in mind when generalizing the results. As an early-share version of the peer-reviewed, accepted article, the paper is citable through a permanent DOI and is subject to further edits before the final Version of Record appears.

For researchers and clinicians interested in maladaptive daydreaming, the study offers a refined way to differentiate the condition from ADHD: by tracking whether the moments of daydreaming are also the moments of dissociation. According to these momentary data, in maladaptive daydreaming they are — and this dynamic is what sets the condition apart from the mind wandering of ADHD.

Subject of Research: Caught in the moment: Do momentary dissociative aspects differentiate Maladaptive daydreaming from ADHD?

Article Title: Caught in the moment: Do momentary dissociative aspects differentiate Maladaptive daydreaming from ADHD?

Article References: Theodor-Katz, N., & Soffer-Dudek, N. (2026). Caught in the moment: Do momentary dissociative aspects differentiate Maladaptive daydreaming from ADHD?. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05449-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05449-7

Keywords: Caught, moment, momentary, dissociative, aspects, differentiate, Maladaptive, daydreaming, ADHD, scientific research