Now you hear me, now you don't: eyelid closures as an indicator of auditory task disengagement

Abstract

Study objectives: Eyelid closures in fatigued individuals signify task disengagement in attention-demanding visual tasks. Here, we studied how varying degrees of eyelid closure predict responses to auditory stimuli depending on whether a participant is well rested or sleep deprived. We also examined time-on-task effects and how more and less vulnerable individuals differed in frequency of eye closures and lapses.

Design: Six repetitions of an auditory vigilance task were performed in each of two sessions: rested wakefulness (RW) and total sleep deprivation (TSD) (order counterbalanced).

Setting: Sleep laboratory.

Participants: Nineteen healthy young adults (mean age: 22 ± 2.8 y; 11 males).

Intervention: Approximately 24 h of TSD.

Measurements and results: Eyelid closure was rated on a 9-point scale (1 = fully closed to 9 = fully opened) using video segments time-locked to the auditory event. Eyes-open trials predominated during RW, but different degrees of eye closure were uniformly distributed during TSD. The frequency of lapses (response time > 800 ms or nonresponses) to auditory stimuli increased dramatically with greater degrees of eye closure, but the association was strong only during TSD. There were significant within-run time-on-task effects on eye closure and auditory lapses that were exacerbated by TSD. Participants who had more auditory lapses during TSD (more vulnerable) had greater variability in their eyelid closures.

Conclusions: Eyelid closures are a strong predictor of auditory task disengagement in the sleep-deprived state but are less relevant during rested wakefulness. Individuals relatively more impaired in this auditory vigilance task during total sleep deprivation display oculomotor evidence for greater state instability.

Keywords: Auditory attention; eye closure; sleep deprivation; sustained attention; time on-task.

Figure 1

Frequency of ES occurrence (right axis) and transformed frequency (left axis) for (A) all trials, (B) lapses (RT > 800 ms) and (C) fastest 10% in the RW (light gray bars) and TSD (dark gray bars) states collapsed into 3 eyescore bins. Transformations were performed for ANOVA analyses using $\sqrt{n}+\sqrt{n+1}$,^, where n = number of trials in each eyescore bin. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. ANOVA, analysis of variance; ES, eyescore, RT, response time; RW, rested wakefulness; TSD, total sleep deprivation

Figure 2

Time-on-task effects on (A) eyescore and (B) 1/RT in RW (open squares) and TSD (filled circles) within a run. RTs for non-responses were set to 6 sec, representing the mean and median SOA between trials. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. RT, response time; SOA, stimulus onset intervals; TSD, total sleep deprivation.

Figure 3

Time-on-task effects on lapse frequency for less vulnerable (LV; gray crosses) and more vulnerable (MV; black open triangles) participants within a run in total sleep deprivation. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.