Journal
CONSCIOUSNESS AND COGNITION
Volume 53, Issue -, Pages 165-175Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2017.06.009
Keywords
Self-generated thought; Perceptual decoupling; Eye movements; Idea generation; Internally directed cognition
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Funding
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [P29801-B27]
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [P29801] Funding Source: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
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Humans have a highly developed visual system, yet we spend a high proportion of our time awake ignoring the visual world and attending to our own thoughts. The present study examined eye movement characteristics of goal-directed internally focused cognition. Deliberate internally focused cognition was induced by an idea generation task. A letter-by-letter reading task served as external task. Idea generation (vs. reading) was associated with more and longer blinks and fewer microsaccades indicating an attenuation of visual input. Idea generation was further associated with more and shorter fixations, more saccades and saccades with higher amplitudes as well as heightened stimulus-independent variation of eye vergence. The latter results suggest a coupling of eye behavior to internally generated information and associated cognitive processes, i.e. searching for ideas. Our results support eye behavior patterns as indicators of goal-directed internally focused cognition through mechanisms of attenuation of visual input and coupling of eye behavior to internally generated information.
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