Blinking and Mental Load

Abstract

The rate of blinking is related to certain mental activities. One common feature of states associated with low blink rates is the presence of concentrated cognitive activity. The purpose of the present study was to determine how blinking is affected by variations in mental load; it was hypothesized that, for a given nonvisual task, blinking would decrease as mental load increased. The first study reported here manipulated memory load by requiring Ss to retain a sequence of 4, 6, or 8 digits. The second study involved mental arithmetic under time pressure; half the trials contained zeros in the sequence of numbers to be summed. In both studies the rate of blinking was low when mental load was high and the rate was high when mental load was low. It is speculated that blinking may disrupt certain cognitive processes and may therefore be inhibited when these processes are active. When mental load is increased, the inhibition of blinking may be an adaptive mechanism which protects vulnerable cognitive processes from interference.

Measuring the Perceived Difficulty of a Lecture Using Automatic Facial Expression Recognition

“…The only AU which showed both a significant and consistent correlation (though not necessarily in the top 3) with difficulty was AU 45 (blink) -for 6 out of 8 subjects their difficulty labels were negatively correlated with blink, meaning these subjects blinked less during the more difficult sections of video. This finding is consistent with evidence from experimental psychology that blink rate decreases when interest or mental load is high [13,14]. To our surprise, AU 4 (brow lowerer), which is associated with concentration and consternation, was not consistently positively correlated with difficulty.…”

GSR and Blink Features for Cognitive Load Classification

“…Another research has measured the blink rate in resting, reading and talking conditions [1]. A few studies have examined blink features in two cognitive load levels and found them related with mental load level [5,8].…”

The role of awareness in the operant conditioning of eye blinks

“…For example, anxiety is associated with high blink rates and intense cognitive activity with low blink rates. Holland and Tarlow (1972) similarly report differential rates of blinking for different mental states. Hall (1945) conducted a series of experiments on eye blinks, and he discussed the variety and purposes of blinks in man.…”