1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A psychophysiological study of visual functions of endogenous eyeblinks.
| Project/Area Number |
07610089
|
|---|
| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
|
| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
|---|
| Section | 一般 |
|---|
| Research Field |
実験系心理学
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Tohoku Gakuin University |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
TADA Hideoki Tohoku Gakuin University, Department of Psychology, Professor, 教養学部, 教授 (90045675)
|
|---|
| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
HATAYAMA Toshiteru Tohoku University, Faculty of Arts and Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (90048801)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
1995 – 1997
|
| Keywords | eyeblinks, / vision, / dark adaptation, / mental load, / task difficulty, / inner and outer attention, / working memory, |
|---|
| Research Abstract |
Eyeblinks are not a purposive and adaptive apparatus for vision from the view point of information processing or behavior, for eyeblinks bring usually about a black out period every few seconds. However, no one has been pointed out its disadvantages of visual efficiency because of its informational and behavioral disturbances by eyeblinks. So the purpose of the present study is to examine the visual function of endogenous eyeblinks by operating some visual variables.
One conclusion drawn from three experiments which had dealt with the main issue of the differences of eyeblink activities between light and dark condition was that the light condition was not a critical variable which determine eyeblink rates. All of three experiments conducted demonstrated consistently the only tendency effect of light condition, which implicates the relatively low effect of light factor. However, the blink wave forms were dramatically changed from light to dark condition. The EOG form of eyeblinks in the dark chamber was changed to the lower but longer wave, which indicates to shift to the slow and incomplete blinks.
One more finding is that in many cases blinks are the indices of the other psychological variables rather than the visual functions. It is our impression that eyeblinks are to increase linearly as a function of mental load, task difficulty and working memory especially during the internal processing of information after acquiring the outer visual information. So we concluded that the visual functions of eyeblinks are relatively degraded and the role of eyeblinks as internal operation as mental load, task difficulty, or working memory, especially in the situation where no more information collection is required.
|
