Overview
The Affect, Cognition, and Computation (ACC) Lab at the University of Minnesota and the Penn Center for Learning Analytics at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to announce the Eye, Mind, Wander Data Competition. This competition provides participants with anonymized observational data capturing learners’ eye gaze and associated behavioral measures. The dataset contains in-situ thought probes (task-unrelated thought, freely-moving thought, valence, arousal, etc.), with the goal of assessing cognitive/affective constructs “in the moment” during learning. The dataset contains information from a large set of diverse learners (spanning multiple ages, contexts, races, and geographical locations) during multiple forms of learning, such as reading, video, and VR.
Entrants are challenged to leverage this dataset to produce novel scientific insights into attention, cognition, engagement, or other scientific areas. The contribution can be geared toward learning science, cognitive science, and/or learning analytics.
Competition Data
The Eye Mind Wander dataset collection comprises eye-tracking recordings, timestamps, and probe responses.
Entrants to the competition can use any of the datasets in the collection — or multiple datasets from the collection — in the research the entry is based upon. No external datasets (except those previously processed by LLMs or other pre-trained models) may be used.
Additional metadata (e.g., reading proficiency measures, text difficulty levels, and demographic data) are also available for some datasets.
All data within the database is fully deidentified and in compliance with IRB and privacy regulations.
Competition Methods
Participants may use any valid and rigorous analysis methods.
Submissions will be judged in part on methodological rigor, but a range of methods are accepted, including but not limited to:
Statistics
Analytics, Data Mining, and Machine Learning
Quantitative Ethnography
Analysis with Pre-Trained Models, Including Large Language Models
Goals and Suggested Directions
Although you may pursue any research question that engages with the dataset, potential areas of inquiry include:
Predicting mind wandering episodes from eye-tracking data.
Investigating reading comprehension strategies and how they relate to inattention.
Developing new metrics or algorithms that identify attention, mind wandering, or boredom in real time.
Investigating the relationship between measures collected in studies in more complex ways
Investigating the antecedents of mind wandering episodes
Investigating the factors differentiating students who do and do not mind wander
Submission Requirements
Format: Short paper describing your scientific advance. There is no strict page limit or formatting requirement—participants may choose the style (e.g., APA, ACM, etc.) or even use bullet points. The core consideration should be clear and effective communication.
Content: Your entry should detail (1) the research question/problem, (2) methods/analyses, (3) results/insights, and (4) implications and potential impact, including advances over prior work. This exact order is recommended (though not required), to facilitate judging.
Supplementary Code and Materials: While not strictly required, we encourage sharing analysis protocols (e.g., Jupyter notebooks, scripts) in a public repository.
Evaluation Criteria
Submissions will be judged on the following:
Technical Rigor: Soundness of methods, correctness of analyses, and reproducibility.
Scientific Importance: Novelty, significance, and potential for advancing broader scientific understanding of reading, attention, cognition, engagement, or other fields.
Clarity: Clarity and understandability of writeup.
The judging panel will be composed of neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and learning analytics researchers. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the judging panel, your scientific contribution should be made clear to a range of experts. Additional experts may be consulted for any submission requiring specific methodological knowledge or scientific claims beyond the committee’s expertise.
Prizes
First Place (1 winner): US$5,000 and an invitation to give a presentation at the annual meeting of Society for Computers in Psychology (SCiP).
All Entrants will be invited to submit a version of their work to a special issue at the “Journal of To Be Named Later.”
Important Dates
Competition Launch: Winter 2025
Submission Deadline: April 1, 2026 (11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth)
Announcement of Winners: Early Summer 2026
Keynote Presentation at SCiP: Fall 2026 (exact dates to be confirmed)
Organizers
This competition is jointly organized by:
Affect, Cognition, and Computation (ACC) Lab, University of Minnesota
Penn Center for Learning Analytics, University of Pennsylvania
Contact
For inquiries or additional details, please contact us: