ReMind: A Retrospective Self-Report Paradigm for Studying Mind-Wandering Onset During Reading

Abstract

Mind-wandering (MW) is a frequent and pervasive phenomenon, yet it is commonly assessed using self-reports or probe-based methods that offer limited temporal precision regarding its onset. In this study, we introduce a novel paradigm, ReMind, that estimates the onset and duration of MW episodes during natural reading by combining retrospective self-reports with eye-tracking. Participants indicated the words where they believed their mind started and stopped wandering, and these reports were aligned with gaze timestamps to estimate MW onset. Using data from 44 participants, we examined whether knowledge of MW onset improves the detection of MW from eye-tracking signals. To evaluate relevance for both self-report and thought-probe paradigms, we additionally simulated thought probes by randomly sampling time points during reading. Logistic regression classifiers trained on eye-tracking features extracted from time windows anchored to MW onset achieved AUROC scores of 0.659 and 0.621 under the self-report and simulated thought-probe paradigms, respectively, using leave-one-subject-out cross-validation. In both cases, onset-aligned windows outperformed classifiers trained using arbitrary MW windows. Sliding-window analyses further revealed systematic temporal changes around MW onset, with classification performance peaking at approximately 3 seconds after onset. Feature-level analyses showed reduced fixation rate and fixation dispersion, along with increased pupil size following MW onset. Together, these findings characterize the temporal progression from on-task reading to MW. Overall, ReMind provides a useful framework for studying the temporal dynamics of MW during naturalistic reading.