"To find out, the researchers recruited 49 adults and provided them with special glasses that tracked every blink. Then they played recordings of 20 sentences for the subjects with some interfering background noise. They varied the volume of the sentences. The lower the volume, the harder it was to hear over the background sounds, and the more subjects had to concentrate. As participants listened extra hard to make out those quieter sentences, their blinking slowed down."
"The researchers also wondered whether a change in visual conditions, such as lighting, would affect how often people blinked. So they repeated the experiment, but this time, they also randomly varied the lighting between dark, medium, and bright. They found the same pattern as in the first experiment. Changes in lighting made no difference. People blinked less when their brains were working harder."
Forty-nine adults wore special glasses that tracked every blink while recordings of twenty sentences played with interfering background noise. Sentence volume was varied so that lower volumes required greater concentration to hear over background sounds. As participants listened harder to make out quieter sentences, blink rates slowed. Lighting conditions (dark, medium, bright) were randomly varied and produced no change in blink frequency; people still blinked less when cognitive effort increased. Baseline blink rates differ widely among individuals, ranging from about 10 to 70 blinks per minute, so high blink frequency alone does not prove inattention.
Read at Fast Company
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