(73) To blink, or not to blink, that is the question: Eye blinking as an indicator of general dynamic attention allocation
Date:
Contributors: Huber, S. E. , Martini, M., Sachse, P.
Venue: European Summer School on Eye Movements (ESSEM), Bonn, Germany, September 5-10, 2022
Abstract: In this contribution, I present results from two experiments aiming at illuminating the intricate relations between eye blinking, attention and perception during auditory attention tasks. Both experiments confirm (i) that temporal blink patterns are dynamically modulated by purely auditory inputs at a fundamental perceptional level and (ii) that the predictability of auditory stimuli modulates pre-stimulus blink inhibition, illustrating that attentional modulation of perception processes proceeds proactively. The second experiment further investigates if and to what extent these effects may be mediated by the requirement of a motor response to the presented stimuli. While blinking no external, visual information can enter the eye due to physical blockade of the pathway. This is why it has been reasonably argued earlier that eye blinking should be coordinated such with a given task activity that visual information loss is minimized. However, this principle per se cannot explain the fact that the timing of lid closures remains correlated with temporal task structure also when tasks use merely auditory stimuli. In contrast, this finding corroborates the role of eye blinking as a behavioral marker of the dynamics of attention allocation independently of the perception modality. As a form of eye movement, it thus embodies not only the time course of visual attention but of general attentional processes as they shift from external to internal foci of interest and vice versa.