Blinking and Thinking

Blinking is related to certain cognitive processes. For example, individuals “punctuate” their speech by blinking between phrases and at the end of sentences. Daydreaming is associated with low rates of blinking. Blinking occurs between fixations and may be timed so as not to interfere with significant visual input. Apparently, blinking occurs at transitions between internal events and is inhibited at other times. In the experiment reported here, blinking was measured while the activity of operational memory was manipulated with mental load kept constant. The rate of blinking was significantly reduced when the cognitive operation of internal counting was being performed. It is inferred that the blink rate is low when information in memory is being operated on. To suspend blinking during certain cognitive activities would be adaptive if blinking disrupts them. Since the blackout period of the blink produces a rapid change in visual level, blinking disrupts those cognitive processes utilizing display areas accessible to visual input. Operational memory and the visual imagination may share components with the visual perceptual system. To protect these vulnerable processes from interference, blinking may be inhibited when they are active.

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Spontaneous eye blink rate predicts individual differences in exploration and exploitation during reinforcement learning

10.1101/661553 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joanne C. Van Slooten ◽

Sara Jahfari ◽

Jan Theeuwesu

Keyword(s):

Reinforcement Learning ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Network Analysis ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Blink Rate ◽

Negative Outcomes ◽

Exploration And Exploitation ◽

Successful Performance ◽

Eye Blink ◽

Mixture Modelling

AbstractSpontaneous eye blink rate (sEBR) has been linked to striatal dopamine function and to how individuals make value-based choices after a period of reinforcement learning (RL). While sEBR is thought to reflect how individuals learn from the negative outcomes of their choices, this idea has not been tested explicitly. This study assessed how individual differences in sEBR relate to learning by focusing on the cognitive processes that drive RL. Using Bayesian latent mixture modelling to quantify the mapping between RL behaviour and its underlying cognitive processes, we were able to differentiate low and high sEBR individuals at the level of these cognitive processes. Further inspection of these cognitive processes indicated that sEBR uniquely indexed explore-exploit tendencies during RL: lower sEBR predicted exploitative choices for high valued options, whereas higher sEBR predicted exploration of lower value options. This relationship was additionally supported by a network analysis where, notably, no link was observed between sEBR and how individuals learned from negative outcomes. Our findings challenge the notion that sEBR predicts learning from negative outcomes during RL, and suggest that sEBR predicts individual explore-exploit tendencies. These then influence value sensitivity during choices to support successful performance when facing uncertain reward.

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Intra-subject consistency of spontaneous eye blink rate in young women across the menstrual cycle

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-72749-2 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Esmeralda Hidalgo-Lopez ◽

Georg Zimmermann ◽

Belinda Pletzer

Keyword(s):

Menstrual Cycle ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Null Hypothesis ◽

Luteal Phase ◽

Strong Support ◽

Cycle Phase ◽

Blink Rate ◽

Eye Blink ◽

Individual Consistency ◽

Estradiol Levels

Abstract The spontaneous eye blink rate (EBR) has been linked to different cognitive processes and neurobiological factors. It has also been proposed as a putative index for striatal dopaminergic function. While estradiol is well-known to increase dopamine levels through multiple mechanisms, no study up to date has investigated whether the EBR changes across the menstrual cycle. This question is imperative however, as women have sometimes been excluded from studies using the EBR due to potential effects of their hormonal profile. Fifty-four women were tested for spontaneous EBR at rest in three different phases of their menstrual cycle: during menses (low progesterone and estradiol), in the pre-ovulatory phase (when estradiol levels peak and progesterone is still low), and during the luteal phase (high progesterone and estradiol). No significant differences were observed across the menstrual cycle and Bayes factors show strong support for the null hypothesis. Instead, we observed high intra-individual consistency of the EBR in our female sample. Accordingly, we strongly encourage including female participants in EBR studies, regardless of their cycle phase.

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Blinking and Mental Load

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1972.31.1.119 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 119-127 ◽

Cited By ~ 80

Author(s):

Morris K. Holland ◽

Gerald Tarlow

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Time Pressure ◽

Memory Load ◽

Mental Arithmetic ◽

Cognitive Activity ◽

Adaptive Mechanism ◽

Mental Load

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.

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Tracking Real-Time Changes in Working Memory Updating and Gating with the Event-Based Eye-Blink Rate

10.1101/098103 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Rachel Rac-Lubashevsky ◽

Heleen A. Slagter ◽

Yoav Kessler

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Striatal Dopamine ◽

Blink Rate ◽

Eye Blink ◽

Non Invasive ◽

Working Memory Updating ◽

Time Changes ◽

Event Based ◽

Gating Process

AbstractEffective working memory (WM) functioning depends on the gating process that regulates the balance between maintenance and updating of WM. The present study used the event-based eye-blink rate (ebEBR), which presumably reflects phasic striatal dopamine activity, to examine how the cognitive processes of gating and updating separately facilitate flexible updating of WM contents and the potential involvement of dopamine in these processes. Realtime changes in eye blinks were tracked during performance on the reference-back task, in which demands on these two processes were independently manipulated. In all three experiments, trials that required WM updating and trials that required gate switching were both associated with increased ebEBR. These results may support the prefrontal cortex basal ganglia WM model (PBWM) by linking updating and gating to striatal dopaminergic activity. In Experiment 3, the ebEBR was used to determine what triggers gate switching. We found that switching to an updating mode (gate opening) was more stimulus driven and retroactive than switching to a maintenance mode, which was more context driven. Together, these findings show that the ebEBR – an inexpensive, non-invasive, easy-to-use measure – can be used to track changes in WM demands during task performance and, hence, possibly striatal dopamine activity.

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A model of organizing activities for training metacognitive skills for primary education students in Mathematics teaching methodology courses

Vietnam Journal of Education ◽

10.52296/vje.2020.6 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 36-43

Author(s):

Nga Thi Hoang

Keyword(s):

Primary Education ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Mathematics Teaching ◽

Teaching Methodology ◽

Metacognitive Skills ◽

Education Students ◽

Cognitive Activities

Metacognition is defined as a person’s ability to control their own cognitive processes, including knowledge of cognitive processes and the orientating, monitoring, revising, and evaluating of cognitive activities involved as needed. The paper proposes a model of organizing activities for training metacognitive skills for primary education students in Mathematics teaching methodology courses.

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Pupillary dilations of mice performing a vibrotactile discrimination task reflect task engagement and response confidence

10.1101/444919 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

DA Ganea ◽

A Bexter ◽

M Guenther ◽

PM Garderes ◽

BM Kampa ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Pupil Size ◽

Task Demands ◽

Motor Output ◽

Active Engagement ◽

Mental Load ◽

Pupillary Responses ◽

Attention And Perception ◽

Response Confidence

AbstractPupillometry, the measure of pupil size and reactivity, has been widely used to assess cognitive processes. As such, changes in pupil size have been shown to correlate with arousal, locomotion, cortical state and decision-making processes. In addition, pupillary responses have been linked to the activity of neuromodulatory systems that modulate attention and perception as the noradrenergic and cholinergic systems. Due to the extent of processes reflected by the pupil, we aimed at resolving pupillary responses in context of behavioral state and task performance while recording pupillary transients of mice performing a vibrotactile two-alternative forced choice task (2-AFC). We show that pre-stimulus pupil size differentiates between states of disengagement from task performance versus active engagement. In addition, when actively engaged, post-stimulus, pupillary dilations for correct responses are larger than for error responses with this difference reflecting response confidence. Importantly, in a delayed 2-AFC task version, we show that even though pupillary transients mainly reflect motor output or reward anticipation following the response of the animal, they also reflect animal decision confidence prior to its response. Finally, in a condition of passive engagement, when stimulus has no task relevance with reward provided automatically, pupillary dilations reflect stimulation and reward being reduced relative to a state of active engagement explained by shifts of attention from task variables. Our results provide further evidence for how pupillary dilations reflect cognitive processes in a task relevant context, showing that the pupil reflects response confidence and baseline pupil size encodes attentiveness rather than general arousal.Significance StatementFor the last 60 years, pupillometry has been used to study various cognitive processes. Among which are mental load, arousal and various decision related components, linking pupil dilations to underlying neuromodulatory systems. Our results provide extensive evidence that in addition to reflecting attentiveness under task performance, pupil dilations also reflect the confidence of the subject in his ensuing response. This confidence coding is overlaid within a more pronounced pupil dilation that reflects motor output or other post-decision components such that are related to the response itself but not to the decision. Our results also provide evidence how different behavioral states, imposed by task demands, modulate what the pupil is reflecting, presumably showing what the underlying cognitive network is coding for.

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SOUND AND SCENTS

Victorian Literature and Culture ◽

10.1017/s1060150306051229 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 385-387

Author(s):

Barbara T. Gates

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Middle Class ◽

Rapid Change ◽

Class Consciousness ◽

Victorian Culture ◽

Victorian Fiction ◽

Visual Imagination ◽

To Come ◽

And Gender ◽

Do So

AFTER MORE THAN A DECADEscrutinizing the importance of sight in the nineteenth century, Victorian scholars are training their own sights on other senses. Books like Jonathan Crary'sTechniques of the Observer(MIT 1990), James Krasner'sEntangled Eye(Oxford 1992), and Kate Flint'sThe Victorians and the Visual Imagination(Cambridge 2000)–studies that revolutionized our understanding of why and how sight mattered in Victorian culture–have recently been complemented by books like the two under review here. Janice Carlisle'sCommon Scents: Comparative Encounters in High-Victorian Fictionand John M. Picker'sVictorian Soundscapeshave much in common. While focusing on a sense other than sight, each shifts gracefully between Victorian culture and literature, and each demonstrates concern with class and gender. Both books can certainly awaken a reader to a new recognition of what it meant to be alive during an era of rapid change and rampant class-consciousness. We sniff out others along with the characters in Carlisle's chosen novels and retreat to our own quiet studies with sighs of relief as we read about Picker's Victorian scholars' and illustrators' attempts to create soundproof studies in order to exclude the cries and clatter of London streets. As we do so, it is all but impossible to come away without a refreshed perception of what it meant to be a middle-class Victorian male, besieged by the smell of an alluring woman or the annoying sound of a persistent organ grinder.

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Spontaneous eye blink rate predicts individual differences in exploration and exploitation during reinforcement learning

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-019-53805-y ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joanne C. Van Slooten ◽

Sara Jahfari ◽

Jan Theeuwes

Keyword(s):

Reinforcement Learning ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Network Analysis ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Blink Rate ◽

Negative Outcomes ◽

Exploration And Exploitation ◽

Successful Performance ◽

Eye Blink ◽

Mixture Modelling

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Cognitive Adaptation in Latency: The Construction of Social Reality

Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal ◽

10.1177/070674377602100402 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 186-191 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David Elkind

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Social Behaviour ◽

Social Reality ◽

Child Behaviour ◽

Social Adaptation ◽

Social Situations ◽

Cognitive Adaptation ◽

Cognitive Activities ◽

Latency Age

This paper looks briefly at cognitive adaptation as it pertains to the child's construction of social reality, and suggests that what sociologists call “frames” can be a useful concept for specifying what it is the child must conceptualize to deal appropriately with social situations. In addition, the concepts of deference and demeanour, the actions of an individual as actor and audience, are useful in understanding why children learn to behave appropriately in behaviour frames. Much of the paper is devoted to describing frames, suggesting some of the cognitive processes employed in their construction and to some of the behaviours resulting from inappropriate frame behaviour. It is necessary to point out that while the frame approach to social adaptation may be useful it has limitations. It is perhaps excessively situational and does not pay sufficient attention to more abiding motivations and cognitive activities. Frame behaviour thus cannot provide a complete explanation of children's social behaviour, but it does add an important and missing dimension to the usual accounts of social behaviour. To some extent the child's behaviour is determined by the frames in which he is participating. Accordingly, the understanding of frame behaviour should add to the understanding of child behaviour in general and to the behaviour of the latency-age child in particular. For it is in the latter that failures to behave in frames are the most frequent and the most apparent, and are therefore the most likely to be misinterpreted by adults.

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Investigating Variations in Gameplay: Cognitive Implications

International Journal of Computer Games Technology ◽

10.1155/2015/208247 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2015 ◽

pp. 1-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Kamran Sedig ◽

Robert Haworth ◽

Michael Corridore

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Computer Games ◽

Deep Level ◽

Structural Elements ◽

Structural Components ◽

Learning Problem ◽

Exploratory Investigation ◽

Games For Learning ◽

Cognitive Activities ◽

High Level

There is increasing interest in creating computer games for learning, problem solving, and other high-level cognitive activities. When investigating whether gameplay is conducive to such activities, gameplay is often studied as a whole. As a result, cognitive implications can be linked to the game but not to its structural elements. Given that gameplay arises from interaction between the player and the game, it is the structural components of interaction that should be investigated to better understand the design of gameplay. Furthermore, minor variations in the components of interaction can have significant cognitive implications. However, such variation has not been studied yet. Thus, to gain a better understanding of how we can study the effect of interaction on the cognitive aspect of gameplay, we conducted an exploratory investigation of two computer games. These games were isomorphic at a deep level and only had one minor difference in the structure of their interaction. Volunteers played these games and discussed the cognitive processes that emerged. In one game, they primarily engaged in planning, but in the other game they primarily engaged in visualizing. This paper discusses the results of our investigation as well as its implications for the design of computer games.

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