Why do eye-blinks activate during conversation? We manipulated informational content and communicative intent exchanged within dyads. By comparison to a silent situation, both emitters and receivers increased their blink rate when the former delivered a treasure hunt route to the latter. When the previously known route was repeated, or when the alphabet was reeled off within the same dyads, the receiver did not increase the rate, although the emitter did. The emitter’s rate increased as well when formulating the route not vocally but silently in an inner voice; none reacted when the emitter was really silent. Therefore, the high rates of spontaneous blinking commonly observed during a conversation can be explained outside of a bilateral communication function. It seems primarily related to individual cognitive processing of afferent or efferent information. The speaker blinks when handling the speech; the listener blinks only when taking heed of useful content.

为什么在谈话中眨眼会激活？我们操纵了在 dyads 中交换的信息内容和交流意图。与无声情况相比，当前者向后者传递寻宝路线时，发射器和接收器都增加了眨眼率。当重复先前已知的路线时，或者当字母表在相同的二元组中被卷走时，接收器没有增加速率，尽管发射器增加了。当用内心的声音而不是口头地制定路线时，发射器的速率也增加了；发射器真的没有反应无声。因此，在对话过程中通常观察到的高自发眨眼率可以在双边交流功能之外进行解释。它似乎主要与传入或传出信息的个体认知处理有关。说话人在处理讲话时会眨眼；听者只有在注意到有用的内容时才会眨眼。