The art of blinking : a review of stimuli modality and attention on blink rates

Abstract

This review aims to reconcile the contradicting results on mental workload and eye blink rate (EBR). While a series of studies such as those by Holland and Tarlow (1972, 1975) showed that higher mental workload is reflected by higher EBR, others such as Wood and Hassett (1983) and Fukuda, Stern, Brown, and Russo (2005) suggest otherwise. The emphasis of this review will be placed in the tasks employed in each study, which will be subsequently argued as the underlying factor for the conflicting results. Prior to the reviews, the basics on eye blinks will first be discussed to provide a physiological and neurological basis of argument. Subsequently, this paper will discuss the influence of stimuli modality and attention, referred to as nature of task in the paper, on the relationship between mental workload and EBR. In addition, this paper speculates the involvement of alpha power in playing a role in the interaction of stimuli modality and nature of task based on its involvement in similar neurological processes. Taken as a whole, the influence of alpha power is speculated to be the cause of EBR being context dependant. Specifically, higher mental workload will be reflected by lower EBR when visual stimuli is used. However, above a certain threshold, whereby mental workload is deemed too high, EBR will increase instead. Lastly, this paper concludes with the importance of understanding the relationship of EBR and mental workload by arguing its applicability in real-world scenarios, providing an applied function to the future research findings.