sarahness

All you have to do to see if the person you are talking to is really listening is to look into their eyes.

According to a study, when a person blinks, it is a sign that their mind is wandering. The researchers think that blinking sets up tiny physical barriers that help to shut off the outside world.

“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,” said neuroscientist Dr Daniel Smilek, from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

“The simplest thing that might happen is you might close your eyes more.”

The scientists had 15 volunteers read from a computer screen while a sensor tracked their eye movements to record any blinks. In addition, while volunteers are reading, the computer beeped to see if the subjects are paying attention to what they were reading or whether their minds were wandering.

The scientists found out that the volunteers blink more when they weren’t paying attention.

‘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,’ said Dr Smilek.