Detecting Mind Wandering Episodes in Virtual Realities Using Eye Tracking

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-171
Author(s):  
Michael Klesel ◽  
Michael Schlechtinger ◽  
Frederike Marie Oschinsky ◽  
Colin Conrad ◽  
Bjoern Niehaves
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Virtual Realities

The Wandering Eye: An Eye Tracking Approach to Mind Wandering

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Schnabel
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Target Location ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Moving Target ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
The Mind

Mind wandering, or “daydreaming,” is a shift in the contents of a thought away from a task and/or event in the external environment, to self-generated thoughts and feelings. This research seeks to test the reliability of eye tracking as an objective of measure mind wandering using the Wandering Eye Paradigm, as well as examine the relationships between mind wandering and individual characteristics. Fifty participants will be recruited for two appointments a day apart, on each day on each day completing two eye tracking sessions following a moving target. In this task, participants will be instructed to press the space bar if they feel they are mind wandering, and then answer three questions about their episode content. Questionnaires measuring mind wandering, procrastination, mindfulness, creativity and personality (in particular conscientiousness) will be completed between eye tracking sessions. By comparing the eye tracking data in the period prior to the spacebar press we can determine quantifiable indicators of the onset and duration of mind wandering episodes by analyzing gaze location in relation to the target location. It has been hypothesized that severity of task performance failures (losing track of the target) should correlate with the “depth” of the mind wandering episode content. Additionally, we expect the frequency of mind wandering episodes to correlate with individual characteristics, and that these measures will be consistent across trials. This research would provide a novel objective way to identify and measure mind wandering, and would help further advance the understanding of its behavioral and subjective dimensions.

scholarly journals The Scientific Study of Passive Thinking: The Methodology of Mind Wandering Research

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Murray ◽  
Zachary Irving ◽  
Kristina Krasich
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Objective Measures ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Direct Sensitivity

In this chapter, we survey methodological challenges in the empirical study of mind wandering and provide a metaphysical framework that begins to address these challenges. We argue that mind wandering is a passive manifestation of agency—passive because people cannot mind wander on command and a manifestation of agency because the onset, progression, and content of mind wandering often exhibits direct sensitivity to personal concerns and plans. To measure passive thinking, researchers must ask, “Is your mind wandering?” Worries about this self-report methodology have encouraged researchers to develop “objective” measures of mind wandering through eye tracking and machine learning techniques. These “objective” measures, however, are validated in terms of how well they predict self-reports, which means that purportedly objective measures of mind wandering retain a subjective core. To assuage worries about self-report (and, ultimately, vindicate objective measures of mind wandering), we offer a metaphysical account of mind wandering that generates several predictions about its causes and consequences. This account also justifies different methods for measuring mind wandering.

scholarly journals Mind Wandering in a Multimodal Reading Setting: Behavior Analysis & Automatic Detection Using Eye-Tracking and an EDA Sensor

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 2546
Author(s):  
Iuliia Brishtel ◽  
Anam Ahmad Khan ◽  
Thomas Schmidt ◽  
Tilman Dingler ◽  
Shoya Ishimaru ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Random Forest Classification ◽  
Novel Technique ◽  
Forest Classification ◽  
Context Of Learning ◽  
Sad Music

Mind wandering is a drift of attention away from the physical world and towards our thoughts and concerns. Mind wandering affects our cognitive state in ways that can foster creativity but hinder productivity. In the context of learning, mind wandering is primarily associated with lower performance. This study has two goals. First, we investigate the effects of text semantics and music on the frequency and type of mind wandering. Second, using eye-tracking and electrodermal features, we propose a novel technique for automatic, user-independent detection of mind wandering. We find that mind wandering was most frequent in texts for which readers had high expertise and that were combined with sad music. Furthermore, a significant increase in task-related thoughts was observed for texts for which readers had little prior knowledge. A Random Forest classification model yielded an F 1 -Score of 0.78 when using only electrodermal features to detect mind wandering, of 0.80 when using only eye-movement features, and of 0.83 when using both. Our findings pave the way for building applications which automatically detect events of mind wandering during reading.

Mind wandering as data augmentation: How mental travel supports abstraction

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myrthe Faber
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Data Augmentation ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Important Addition

Abstract Gilead et al. state that abstraction supports mental travel, and that mental travel critically relies on abstraction. I propose an important addition to this theoretical framework, namely that mental travel might also support abstraction. Specifically, I argue that spontaneous mental travel (mind wandering), much like data augmentation in machine learning, provides variability in mental content and context necessary for abstraction.

An Eye-Tracking Study on Audiovisual Speech Perception Strategies Adopted by Normal-Hearing and Deaf Adults Under Different Language Familiarities

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 2245-2254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianrong Wang ◽  
Yumeng Zhu ◽  
Yu Chen ◽  
Abdilbar Mamat ◽  
Mei Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Audiovisual Speech ◽  
Audiovisual Speech Perception ◽  
Allocation Pattern ◽  
Deaf Adults ◽  
Bilingual Speaker ◽  
Primary Hypothesis ◽  
Standard Chinese

Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to explore the audiovisual speech perception strategies.80.23.47 adopted by normal-hearing and deaf people in processing familiar and unfamiliar languages. Our primary hypothesis was that they would adopt different perception strategies due to different sensory experiences at an early age, limitations of the physical device, and the developmental gap of language, and others. Method Thirty normal-hearing adults and 33 prelingually deaf adults participated in the study. They were asked to perform judgment and listening tasks while watching videos of a Uygur–Mandarin bilingual speaker in a familiar language (Standard Chinese) or an unfamiliar language (Modern Uygur) while their eye movements were recorded by eye-tracking technology. Results Task had a slight influence on the distribution of selective attention, whereas subject and language had significant influences. To be specific, the normal-hearing and the d10eaf participants mainly gazed at the speaker's eyes and mouth, respectively, in the experiment; moreover, while the normal-hearing participants had to stare longer at the speaker's mouth when they confronted with the unfamiliar language Modern Uygur, the deaf participant did not change their attention allocation pattern when perceiving the two languages. Conclusions Normal-hearing and deaf adults adopt different audiovisual speech perception strategies: Normal-hearing adults mainly look at the eyes, and deaf adults mainly look at the mouth. Additionally, language and task can also modulate the speech perception strategy.

Psychometric Properties of the Spontaneous and Deliberate Mind Wandering Scales

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 878-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marcusson-Clavertz ◽  
Oscar N. E. Kjell
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Psychometric Properties ◽  
Generalized Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Social Desirability ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Generalized Anxiety ◽  
Psychological Variables

Abstract. Thinking about task-unrelated matters (mind wandering) is related to cognition and well-being. However, the relations between mind wandering and other psychological variables may depend on whether the former commence spontaneously or deliberately. The current two studies investigated the psychometric properties of the Spontaneous and Deliberate Mind Wandering Scales (SDMWS; Carriere, Seli, & Smilek, 2013 ). Study 1 evaluated the stability of the scales over 2 weeks ( N = 284 at Time 1), whereas Study 2 ( N = 323) evaluated their relations to Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms, Openness, Social desirability, and experience-sampling reports of intentional and unintentional mind wandering during an online cognitive task. The results indicated that the SDMWS were better fitted with a two-factor than a one-factor solution, although the fit was improved with the exclusion of one item. The scales exhibited strong measurement invariance across gender and time, and moderately high test-retest reliability. Spontaneous mind wandering predicted Generalized anxiety disorder and experience-sampling reports of unintentional mind wandering, whereas Deliberate mind wandering predicted Openness and experience-sampling reports of intentional mind wandering. Furthermore, Spontaneous mind wandering showed a negative association with social desirability of weak-to-medium strength. In sum, the scales generally showed favorable psychometric properties.

Activation and Persistence of Implicit Causality Information in Spoken Language Comprehension

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirita Pyykkönen ◽  
Juhani Järvikivi
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Implicit Causality ◽  
Causality Information ◽  
Spoken Language Comprehension

A visual world eye-tracking study investigated the activation and persistence of implicit causality information in spoken language comprehension. We showed that people infer the implicit causality of verbs as soon as they encounter such verbs in discourse, as is predicted by proponents of the immediate focusing account ( Greene & McKoon, 1995 ; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006 ; Van Berkum, Koornneef, Otten, & Nieuwland, 2007 ). Interestingly, we observed activation of implicit causality information even before people encountered the causal conjunction. However, while implicit causality information was persistent as the discourse unfolded, it did not have a privileged role as a focusing cue immediately at the ambiguous pronoun when people were resolving its antecedent. Instead, our study indicated that implicit causality does not affect all referents to the same extent, rather it interacts with other cues in the discourse, especially when one of the referents is already prominently in focus.

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