During mind wandering, visual processing of external information is attenuated. Accordingly, mind wandering is associated with changes in gaze behaviors, albeit findings are inconsistent in the literature. This heterogeneity obfuscates a complete view of the moment-to-moment processing priorities of the visual system during mind wandering. We hypothesize that this observed heterogeneity is an effect of idiosyncrasy across tasks with varying spatial allocation demands, visual processing demands, and discourse processing demands and reflects a strategic, compensatory shift in how the visual system operates during mind wandering. We recorded eye movements and mind wandering (via thought-probes) as 132 college-aged adults completed a battery of 7 short (6 min) tasks with different visual demands. We found that for tasks requiring extensive sampling of the visual field, there were fewer fixations, and, depending on the specific task, fixations were longer and/or more dispersed. This suggests that visual sampling is sparser and potentially slower and more dispersed to compensate for the decreased sampling rate during mind wandering. For tasks that demand centrally focused gaze, mind wandering was accompanied by more exploratory eye movements, such as shorter and more dispersed fixations as well as larger saccades. Gaze behaviors were not reliably associated with mind wandering during a film comprehension task. These findings provide insight into how the visual system prioritizes external information when attention is focused inward and indicates the importance of task demands when assessing the relationship between eye movements, visual processing, and mind wandering. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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眼心游荡链接：识别跨任务心智游荡的凝视指数。

在走神期间，外部信息的视觉处理会减弱。因此，走神与凝视行为的变化有关，尽管文献中的研究结果不一致。这种异质性混淆了在走神期间视觉系统的即时处理优先级的完整视图。我们假设这种观察到的异质性是具有不同空间分配需求、视觉处理需求和话语处理需求的任务的特质的影响，并反映了视觉系统在走神期间如何运作的战略性、补偿性转变。我们记录了 132 名大学生完成了 7 项具有不同视觉需求的短（6 分钟）任务时的眼球运动和走神（通过思想探针）。我们发现，对于需要对视野进行广泛采样的任务，注视较少，并且根据特定任务，注视时间更长和/或更分散。这表明视觉采样更稀疏，可能更慢，更分散，以补偿在走神期间降低的采样率。对于需要集中凝视的任务，走神伴随着更多探索性的眼球运动，例如更短、更分散的注视以及更大的扫视。在电影理解任务期间，凝视行为与走神没有可靠的关联。这些发现提供了当注意力集中在内部时视觉系统如何优先考虑外部信息的见解，并表明在评估眼球运动之间的关系时任务需求的重要性，视觉处理和走神。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2020 APA，保留所有权利）。