“co-relationship; Cognition, blinking eye during performance of a running memory task.”
This idea started with the an assumption from Dan’s at first class, “When people blink their eyes, there might be some cognition process happening on your brain for making a memory.” It was so interesting concept that I didn’t care about my body reactions before, but it was start point to monitoring myself.
Many scientist and expert are researching this area and they organized several facts.
The first behavior studied in today’s lab is the eye blink response achieved through the contraction of sets of muscles. Orchard & Stern (1991) identify three types of eye blinks: (a) reflex blinks (in response to something invading the eye), (b) voluntary blinks (as a result of a decision to blink), and (c) endogenous blinks (due to perception and information processing). These eye blinks are the focus of interesting psychological research.
Reflex blinks are instinctive responses that guard the eyes against eye blinks and dust; they are also part of the startle response to loud noises. The blink reflex can be classically conditioned to a neutral stimulus such as a tone. After several pairings of a tone and eye blink, the tone itself will generate the blink. This can be demonstrated easily in class using an eye blink.
Voluntary blinks are under conscious control and include squinting and winking. Applications of voluntary blinking include their use as control signals for communicating when diseases have made other forms of communication difficult or impossible (such as AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, or Alzheimer’s).
Endogenous (meaning “originating from or due to internal causes”) blinks occur during reading or speaking and reflect changes of attention and changes in thought processes. The more attention required by a task, the fewer endogenous blinks occur.
These interesting researches address that you could blink unconsciously during visual attention but it actually happened with consciousness and planed for memory tasking. According to research, it is becoming quite clear that blinks should not occur randomly during reading. Thus, blow in my mind an important and useful question of interest relates, when eye blinks occur depending on what one is reading or watching.
