Pre-trial Gaze Stability Predicts Momentary Slips of Attention

Our ability to maintain focus on a task waxes and wanes. Recent research suggests that eye-tracking may be a useful tool to capture the momentary slips of attention. In this paper, we show that pre-trial gaze stability predicted momentary slips of attention on the upcoming trial. In two visual search tasks, we asked participants to stabilize their gaze on a fixation cross before the search array appeared. We recorded participants’ manual responses and eye movements as they searched for the target. We also occasionally presented thought probes to examine whether participants were mind-wandering on a subset of trials. Results from the two tasks revealed a converging pattern: lower pre-trial gaze stability predicted worse performance in the upcoming trial. Specifically, participants had longer response times, were more influenced by distractors, and inspected the target for a longer duration. Participants also reported greater mind-wandering at the end of the trial if they had low pre-trial gaze stability. Overall, these findings suggest that pre-trial gaze stability is a simple and objective measure that can predict moments of inattention, which may be used to proactively curb its negative effects before the actual task starts.