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Comparative Study
. 2010 May;87(5):337-43.
doi: 10.1097/OPX.0b013e3181d951b2.

Factors regulating eye blink rate in young infants

Leigh F Bacher  1
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Factors regulating eye blink rate in young infants

Leigh F Bacher. Optom Vis Sci. 2010 May.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this work was to investigate whether individual differences in eye surface area are related to the rate of spontaneous eye blinking (SB) in young infants. Rate of SB was also compared with the rate of gaze shifts.

Methods: Forty-four 4-month-old infants were observed under controlled conditions for 4 to 6 min. SB, eye surface area, gaze shifts, and various background variables were measured.

Results: Individual differences in the rate of SB and in eye surface area were wide. Neither the eye surface area nor the rate of gaze shifting was related to the rate of SB in young infants. However, when SB do occur, they are more likely to coincide with a shift in gaze than immediately precede or follow a shift in gaze.

Conclusions: Eye surface area does not explain individual differences in the rate of SB in infancy. This and other recent work suggests that central factors may play a more prominent role in the mechanisms of SB early in human development than previously reported and that the mechanisms regulating the rate of SB seem to be developmentally continuous with those of adults. To the extent that the rate and timing of SB reflects developing neurological systems, SB may be useful clinically.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Histograms illustrate individual differences in the log inter-blink-interval (IBI) and eye surface area (mm2) for the sample (N=44). Inset shows untransformed IBI data.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Log IBI by eye surface area (mm2); symbols reflect quartiles of infant birth weight (larger bubbles indicate larger birth weight).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Left panel: Scatterplot of gaze shift rate (movements per min) by log IBI. Right: Mean (SD) gaze shift rate for three groups of infants who blinked at different rates.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Mean (SE) number of intervals with eye movement across successive 1-sec intervals before and after a spontaneous eye blink (SB) (blinks sampled from 35 infants). Asterisks indicate differences in the number of eye movements for intervals compared to the number of movements coinciding with the SB.
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