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Eyeblinking During Problem Solving: The Effect of Problem Difficulty and Internally vs Externally Directed Attention
Author(s) -
Wood James G.,
Hassett James
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1983.tb00893.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cognitive psychology , factorial experiment , visual attention , variance (accounting) , factorial , developmental psychology , cognition , statistics , neuroscience , mathematics , mathematical analysis , accounting , business
ABSTRACT This study examined the eyeblink rate during non‐visual problem solving. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design compared eyeblink rates for easy and difficult problems, internally and externally directed attention, and numerical and alphabetical tasks. The major finding was a higher eyeblink rate for difficult problems. There was also a significant interaction between difficulty and the direction of attention; internally directed attention yielded higher blink rates only during the solution of easy problems. Range‐corrected data yielded the same pattern of results, but F ‐values were consistently higher and accounted for a larger proportion of the variance.