Understanding how people think is essential to improving how they learn, in controlled settings and in the complexity of everyday life. Caitlin Mills, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, is a cognitive scientist whose work examines how attention, mind wandering, and other real-world thought patterns influence learning and wellbeing. By combining traditional cognitive methods with emerging AI tools, she is expanding how researchers capture and interpret the flow of human thought. In this 5 Questions interview, Mills discusses what she’s learned, why studying everyday thinking matters, and how it can strengthen the future of learning research.
What is the nature of your work?
Most of my academic work has been rooted in trying to understand “thought” – why and how certain thoughts arise (like mind wandering, creative insights, boredom, improbable simulations) and how they are intertwined with how people learn, their wellbeing, and navigate the world around them.
I take a multi-method approach to this to better understand: 1) the conditions under which we experience various types of thoughts, such as daydreaming, having novel ideas, or being “stuck” on a problem; 2) how these thoughts support the way we learn and feel; and 3) the possibility of building AI-based solutions to measure and detect of these different types of thoughts in an effort to support future research and applications.
Why is this work important?
I guess this question could be answered a few different ways, which points to a bit of a divide in the way we view thoughts in research and society. A lot of work has focused primarily on understanding the ways to have “productive thoughts,” or ways to stay on task – effectively trying to mitigate things like mind wandering. We may (and do) want to stay focused sometimes, especially in high stakes situations. But we also want to understand more about our ability to let our minds flow from one topic to another while on a walk, the ability to make new connections while listening to a presentation, and to become deeply curious enough to get “stuck” in a rabbit hole while learning something new. Thoughts that are not explicitly goal-oriented have received less attention so far, despite being important today in a society where states like boredom are increasingly less tolerated. Ultimately, thinking about our own thoughts seems like a pretty important thing.
What’s been the biggest surprise so far?
Part of the surprise (retrospectively) has simply been the evolution of my own thinking. At some point, I cared a lot about understanding the conditions under which people were more likely to go off task. Then, I cared more about unpacking the heterogeneity in the thoughts that people experience when they inevitably go off-task – sometimes people may be truly letting their minds wander (i.e. move freely), while other times it may involve planning what to do later or ruminating on an interpersonal interaction. These are all really different experiences, and each might lead a learner down a different path once they realize their thoughts have strayed. Now, I am thinking more about how it’s actually important to normalize all of these experiences as part of what we all go through everyday.
Where do you see your work in five years?
I hope, at the core, I am still really curious about the way we think. And I hope that many smart researchers help build a new evidence base on how people think, the variations in our thoughts that support learning and wellbeing, and how we experience our own consciousness. I will be excited to keep working in this space and understanding how we can use technology for good to support learning and thinking about our own thinking.
What else should people know?
If you Google “mind wandering,” many results will make it sound like a negative thing. You may see things like it makes us feel bad and learn less. But in reality, we all go off task, all the time (even the most expert meditators). Expecting otherwise isn’t really that useful (which is why it’s hard to imagine students being at full attention for 6+ hours a day with only a few breaks). It’s also important to focus on when it can be a good thing and how to recognize when it happens.
