Strategy in the Blink of an Eye

Previous studies have revealed an intriguing multitude of additional factors influencing human blink rates. Blinking is closely intertwined with cognitive functions connected to dopamine, a neuromodulator involved in reward related behavior and learning. In particular, blink rates are elevated when we are tired and are related to our activities, as they go up when we are talking and go down when we are reading. While blinking is clearly related to these cognitive processes, so far it has been unknown, how blinking relates quantitatively to properties of our environment.

The team of researchers led by professor Constantin Rothkopf, director of the Centre for Cognitive Science, now showed for the first time quantitatively, how blinking is related to environmental task events. Participants in an experiment were instructed to detect short events presented on a computer monitor. The probability of an event occurring was systematically modified by the researchers to reveal participants’ blinking strategies. Participants indeed learned the hidden regularities of the visual events and progressively improved their performance of detecting the events. The analysis of the blinking behavior showed that participants unconsciously blinked less and less the more probable they believed an event was about to occur.