is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behaviour.
It can have three different causes:
- a low level of attention ("blanking" or "zoning out")
- intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around him or her; or
- unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events.
Absent-mindedness is a mental condition in which the subject experiences low levels of attention
and frequent distraction. Absent-mindedness is not a diagnosed
condition but rather a symptom of boredom and sleepiness which people
experience in their daily lives.
When suffering from absent-mindedness,
people tend to show signs of memory lapse and weak recollection of
recently occurring events. This can usually be a result of a variety of
other conditions often diagnosed by clinicians such as ADD and
depression.
In addition to absent-mindedness leading to an array of
consequences affecting daily life, it can have as more severe, long-term
problems.