Out of Mind, out of Sight: Blinking Eyes Indicate Mind Wandering

Cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Smilek, of the University of Waterloo, studies how people pay attention -- and don't. For this study, he was inspired by brain research that shows, when the mind wanders, the parts of the brain that process external goings-on are less active. "And we thought, OK, if that's the case, maybe we'd see that the body would start to do things to prevent the brain from receiving external information," Smilek says. "The simplest thing that might happen is you might close your eyes more."

So, Smilek and his colleagues, Jonathan S.A. Carriere and J. Allan Cheyne, also of the University of Waterloo, set out to look at how often people blink when their mind wanders.

Fifteen volunteers read a passage from a book on a computer. While they read, a sensor tracked their eye movements, including blinks and what word they were looking at. At random intervals, the computer beeped and the subjects reported whether they'd been paying attention to what they were reading or whether their minds were wandering -- which included thinking about earlier parts of the text.
Source Out of Mind, out of Sight: Blinking Eyes Indicate Mind Wandering