When the person you are talking to blinks a lot, it probably means he or she has tuned you out, according to new research that links increased blinking with reduced attention.
So, if you are talking with a manager/colleague/spouse, the unconscious signal that best tells you that the person has tuned you out?
A) He/she blinks a lot
B) He/she does not blink at all
C) His/her eyes are frozen in a stare
D) His/her eyes dart around a lot
The correct answer is A.
I based this puzzle on research by Daniel Smilek, Jonathan S.A. Carriere and J. Allan Cheyne, at the University of Waterloo. The researchers had volunteers read books, and attached eye sensors to the volunteers that measured eye movements and blinking. From time to time, subjects were interrupted and asked whether their minds were wandering. The periods during which the volunteers reported their minds wandered matched the periods when the volunteers blinked their eyes the most.
“What we suggest is that when you start to mind-wander … you basically close your eyelid so there’s less information coming into the brain,” Smilek said in a press statement.
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