Wandering minds, wandering mice: Computer mouse tracking as a method to detect mind wandering

Silva, Mariana Rachel Dias da; Postma, Marie

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2020.106453

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Confirming our expectations in H1, we found that whenever participants were mind wandering, they both missed the oddball more frequently and had slower response times to the oddball. In line with previous work (Arapakis & Leiva, 2016Cetintas et al, 2010;Dias da Silva & Postma, 2020;Kam et al, 2012) and confirming H2, we found that movements change in relation to one's attentional state. Notably, our findings provide further support for a decoupling of sensory and motor processes as the mind wanders.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Beyond the most evident difference in terms of reaching and tracking goals in the study reported in Dias da Silva and Postma (2020) and in the current study, the tasks differed in terms of their complexity, in terms of the types of probes presented, and in terms of the period of time assessed prior to each probe as a mind wandering episode. Notably,the tracking task was more more complex in terms of motor control necessary as participants continuously monitored the position of their mouse in relation to a target on the screen in a fine-grained manner for approximately one hour.…”

Section: Predicting Mind Wandering From Mouse Movementscontrasting

confidence: 61%

“…To minimize the chance of overfitting, eighty percent of the participant data were in the training/validation set, and 20% were held out for testing. We used a leave-one-participant-out cross-validation procedure to train our classifiers in a participant-independent manner (Dias da Silva & Postma, 2020;Pham & Wang, 2015;Yatani & Truong, 2012), such that each model was trained on N À 1 participants, and one participant was held out for validation, for N folds, where N is the number of participants in the training/validation set. Trained models were then tested on the hold-out set and were compared to a corresponding chance baseline computed by randomly sampling classes from the test set.…”

Section: Machine Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, during a visuomotor tracking task, Kam et al (2012) found increased tracking errors during periods of mind wandering relative to periods of focused attention. More recently, we found that movements during a reaching task toward a target became initially slower and overall more complex during periods of mind wandering (Dias da Silva & Postma, 2020). These types of tasks generate a rich set of continuous measures collected across time as individuals follow the path of a target on a screen with either a mouse, joystick, or similar tracking device.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Straying Off Course: The Negative Impact of Mind Wandering on Fine Motor Movements

Silva

Postma

2021

Journal of Motor Behavior

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The goal of this study was to examine how various degrees of perceptual decoupling during mind wandering affect fine motor control. We hypothesized that while under normal circumstances attention ensures an optimal control strategy that leads to accurate motor performance, during mind wandering the process becomes disrupted. In this study, we conducted a computer-based experiment with a tracking task. During mind wandering, motor movements were more erratic and less variable, indicative of reduced attentiveness to the continuous demands of the external task. Importantly, the deeper the reported mind wandering, the less accurate and less variable were the mouse movements, suggesting that perceptual decoupling may take place in a graded rather than in an all or nothing manner. Greater movement intermittency was associated with higher tracking accuracy, suggesting that more corrective movements toward a moving target were functional to task performance. Moreover, greater variance in velocity was negatively correlated with tracking accuracy. These findings suggest that periods of inattention to the task have a negative impact on fine motor movement control by making behavior unpredictable, providing support for the idea that there is a decoupling of sensory-motor processes during mind wandering.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Predicting Mind Wandering From Mouse Movementscontrasting

confidence: 61%

Section: Machine Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Straying Off Course: The Negative Impact of Mind Wandering on Fine Motor Movements

Silva

Postma

2021

Journal of Motor Behavior

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“…The interpretation of speed depends on the experimental manipulation. For example, speed has been used in previous studies to assess uncertainty (Hehman et al, 2015 ), cognitive load (Rheem et al, 2018 ), and the presence of task-unrelated thoughts (Da Dias Silva & Postma, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociating sub-processes of aftereffects of completed intentions and costs to the ongoing task in prospective memory: A mouse-tracking approach

et al. 2022

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In the present study, we used mouse tracking to investigate two processes underlying prospective memory (PM) retrieval: First, we aimed to explore to what extent spontaneous retrieval of already completed PM intentions is supported by reflexive-associative and discrepancy-plus-search processes. Second, we aimed to disentangle whether costs to an ongoing task during the pursuit of a PM intention are associated with presumably resource-demanding monitoring processes or with a presumably resource-sparing strategic delay of ongoing-task responses. Our third aim was to explore the interaction of processes underlying costs to the ongoing task and processes of spontaneous retrieval. Our analyses replicated response-time patterns from previous studies indicating aftereffects of completed intentions and costs to ongoing-task performance, as well as increased aftereffects while pursuing a PM intention. Notably, based on our mouse-tracking analyses, we argue that aftereffects of completed intentions are best explained by a reflexive initiation of an already completed intention. If the completed intention is not performed in its entirety (i.e., no commission error), the reflexive initiation of the completed intention is followed by a subsequent movement correction that most likely represents a time-consuming response-verification process. Regarding performance costs in the ongoing task, our analyses suggest that actively pursuing a PM intention most likely leads to a strategic delay of ongoing activities. Lastly, we found that pursuing a novel PM task after intention completion exacerbated orienting responses to all deviant stimuli, exacerbated the readiness to initiate the completed intention reflexively, and substantially prolonged the response-verification process following this reflexive intention retrieval.

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Mind and Body: The Manifestation of Mind Wandering in Bodily Behaviors

Riel

Branco

Postma

et al. 2022

New Perspectives on Mind-Wandering

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Wandering minds, wandering mice: Computer mouse tracking as a method to detect mind wandering

Cited by 15 publications

References 54 publications

Straying Off Course: The Negative Impact of Mind Wandering on Fine Motor Movements

Straying Off Course: The Negative Impact of Mind Wandering on Fine Motor Movements

Dissociating sub-processes of aftereffects of completed intentions and costs to the ongoing task in prospective memory: A mouse-tracking approach

Mind and Body: The Manifestation of Mind Wandering in Bodily Behaviors

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