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 temporal dynamics in mental states is through intermittent thought probes, which explicitly ask if thoughts are task-related. However, probes are rare and interrupt behavior. We designed a novel paradigm aiming to infer mind wandering (MW) from performance alone. On each trial, participants see a random dot kinematogram with varying evidence and indicate the coherent direction. Importantly, responses are repetitive: 90% of trials exhibit the same direction. To validate our task, participants respond to occasional thought probes. When they reported being off-task, accuracy was higher and RT 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 (HMM-GLM) for each state to responses. In a two-state HMM-GLM, RT was lower on off-task trials. Latent states also aligned with self-reported focus. This shows that attentional states can be measured on a trial-to-trial basis without thought probes, paving the way for future MW research.

Committee Chair

Wouter Kool

Committee Members

Julie Bugg, Todd Braver

Degree

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Author's Department

Psychology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Spring 5-8-2024

Language

English (en)

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Psychology Commons

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