The Effects of Mind Wandering on Gaze Control

Physiological limitations on the visual system require gaze to move from location to location to extract the most relevant information within a scene at the highest visual resolution. Therefore, gaze provides a real-time index of the information-processing priorities of the visual system. The current work investigates gaze control associated with mind wandering (MW), a state where cognitive priorities shift from processing task- relevant external stimuli to task-irrelevant internal thoughts. In both a main study and a replication, global gaze parameters of MW are identified: fewer, longer, and more dispersed fixations relative to periods of attentive scene viewing. These findings demonstrate that gaze parameters typically considered to reflect greater engagement with scene processing (e.g., longer fixations) can also indicate MW. Local aspects of gaze control—visual salience and semantic informativeness—were also explored, but no consistent, temporally precise relationship between these parameters and MW emerged. Together, the current research indicates which gaze parameters are reliable, real-time indicators of MW in a scene viewing task and offers insight into the complex—less understood—relationship between MW and the spatial aspects of gaze control.