Retrospective attention: Examining temporally specific retrospective reports of mind wandering and engagement during online video lectures

Attention typically fluctuates on a moment-to-moment basis and often declines over time-on-task during online video lectures. We explored people’s retrospective reports of specific moments of their prior states of mind wandering and engagement. Undergraduate participants reported in-the-moment levels of either mind wandering (n = 79) or engagement (n = 77) while watching two 15 min video lectures. Then, they were shown short clips from the videos as cues to retrospectively report their levels of mind wandering or engagement from their initial viewing of those specific sections. Finally, participants completed a short content quiz. We found that (a) typical time-on-task effects generally occurred for both in-the-moment and retrospective reports of mind wandering and engagement; (b) there was high temporal concordance between individuals’ retrospective and in-the-moment ratings of both mind wandering and engagement; and (c) performance on the content quiz was correlated with both in-the-moment and retrospective reports of mind wandering and engagement. These findings suggest that individuals can retrospectively report their prior states of both mind wandering and engagement with temporal accuracy. These reports could be based on specific recollections of prior attentional states or inferences made from the video clips used to cue recall.