Abstract
People need to sustain focused attention to achieve goals. Yet, attention often lapses, as minds wander towards task-unrelated thoughts. The conventional way to study such shifts in attention is through thought probes that explicitly ask if thoughts are task-related. However, probes are rare and interrupt behavior. Other methods to measure mind wandering assume a 50/50 split in time spent on-task vs off-task. We address these issues with a framework to infer mind wandering (MW) using computational modeling. We use a random dot motion task with varying evidence, but with a strong bias inducing a repetitive response requirement. Occasional thought probes were used for validation. When participants (N = 93) reported being off-task, accuracy was higher and reaction time (RT) was lower, suggesting less stimulus processing and more reliance on bias. To classify internal states for individual trials from performance, we fit a Hidden Markov Model with Generalized Linear Models (GLM-HMM) for each state to responses. A two-state GLM-HMM predicted lower RTs on off-task trials, revealed an increase in mind wandering across the task, and aligned with self-reported focus. This shows that temporal variation in attentional states can be measured on a trial-to-trial basis without thought probes, paving the way for future MW research.
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References
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Acknowledgements
We thank Todd Braver and Julie Bugg for helpful conversations. We would also like to thank the members of the Control and Decision Making Lab, the Control with Connections group, and the CCN-FACTS MURI group for advice and assistance. We are grateful to Leyla Vilic and Xintian Wang for help with data collection. This work was supported by a Multi-University Research Initiative grant (ONR/DoD N00014-23-1-2792) to W.K. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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C.Z. and W.K. designed the experiment; C.Z. developed the experiment and collected data; C.Z. analyzed data; C.Z. and W.K. wrote the manuscript.
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Zhang, C., Kool, W. Inferring mind wandering from perceptual decision making. Commun Psychol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00424-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00424-9
