Meta-Awareness of Mind Wandering: Examining Effects of Self-Regulated Learning, Interpolated Testing, and Self-Explanation

Background Mind wandering is a common experience for students that negatively impacts learning outcomes. Research has attempted to mitigate the impact by including interpolated testing in the context of learning from videos. The results of these studies are mixed and indicate that interpolated testing may not have a practical effect on reducing mind wandering. Objectives In the present study, we aim to investigate whether writing self-explanations has a stronger effect than interpolated testing on reducing mind wandering and improving learning outcomes. We al-so explore whether self-regulated learning skills are related to meta-awareness of mind wander-ing. Methods 138 participants were recruited across three groups and presented with the same video to review. The first group was the control group. The participants in the second group answered interpolated tests, and the third group wrote self-explanations at pauses in the video. All participants complet-ed a knowledge test before and after watching the video to compare group learning outcomes. Additionally, participants completed questionnaires measuring their self-regulated learning. Self-caught thought reports were used in anticipation that participants expecting to write self-explanations would engage in metacognitive monitoring and thus become meta-aware. Results and Conclusions We found no significant difference between the groups regarding knowledge gain or meta-awareness. Interestingly, higher scores on metacognition and online task strategies subscales of self-regulated learning were associated with fewer thought reports. However, the number of thought reports written correlated positively with knowledge gain, indicating that meta-aware learners perform better on subsequent knowledge tests.

Daniel Ebbert, Alrike Claassen, Natasha Wilson, Srecko Joksimovic, Negin Mirriahi, Shane Dawson

05/2026