3/19/2007

Funny statistics about blink

According to a research paper published in the Perception & Psychophysics 2006, 68 (3), 475-488, human blink, on average, once every 4 sec, or 900 times per hour, and the average blink duration is approximately 250 msec; thus, a total of 1 hour out of every 16-hour waking day is spent blinking.
During this time we see absolutely nothing that's going on around us - but what's even more crazy is that many cognitive functions (iconic memory for example) are suppressed shortly before, during and after the blink.

5 comments:

John A Hill said...

interesting--although I had to google "iconic memory."

Unknown said...

This one made me giggle. It give me another excuse as to why I have an increasing number of holes in my memory. Thank you for that!

Narendra shenoy said...

lovely site. interesting and makes for good party conversation. Lot more interesting than,for instance, the current political situation

jedimstr said...

nice, so we don't remember a little over an hour a day, great. who needs to drink?

Sheila said...

Speaking of politics, I wonder how many hours a day Nancy Pelosi doesn't remember per day due to blinking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0O0wl_UaU8