Figure 9.

Illustration of the computational conditions associated with each phenomenological stage of sustained attention. This figure depicts schematically the main phases of the cycle of focused attention and distraction. Here, being distracted (i.e. mind-wandering) is characterized as the period following the shift in the true latent attentional state from ‘focused’ to ‘distracted’, but before the agent has updated their beliefs to align with the true latent attentional state, i.e. the period in which the agent believes that they are ‘focused’ while they are actually ‘distracted’.