Mind Wandering (MW) is a phenomenon that has drastic implications for performance on tasks requiring sustained attention. Despite this importance, the mechanisms of MW are loosely examined. In a prior paper, a MW model was created which could model the empirical data obtained in the SART. To test the robustness of the MW theory in this model, we investigate whether the theory can be used to model human performance in the MRT. To test our hypothesis, we created two models in ACT-R to simulate perfect human attention and MW accordingly. The analysis revealed that there was no significant difference between the performance of our models and human data. Thus, we can conclude that the MW theory in the previously created model is sufficient for modelling empirical data in the MRT. Despite this result, it is unclear whether our model utilizes the exact mechanisms as human subjects.

This repository contains the ACT-R code that we used to simulate mind wandering of a human subject during the MRT task