Generally, human eye blinks are closely associated with the cognitive state or visual attention such as attentional requirements on visual stimuli. These previous studies have reported that eye blinks are related to explicit visual attention using blink rate, pattern and blink timing across subjects. However, these results have been obtained in a well-controlled experimental settings. So, it would prove difficult to investigate human's natural response in a continuous and realistic situation.

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... our study, we measured the eye blink intervals while participants viewed a movie clip. And we analyzed the blink interval data for relationship between visual attention and eye blink intervals. 24 participants took part in two experimental sessions, first session to measure the IEBI while viewing the movie clip and second session to conduct a memory performance test using a self-questionnaire, which were spaced 3 weeks apart. The results indicate significantly higher memory performance at long IEBI period than short IEBI period while watching a movie clip(t = 3.257, df = 17, p < 0.005, 2-tailed). In addition, memory performance score significantly correlated with the IEBI value(spearman's rho = 0.40, N = 36, p < 0.01, 2-tailed). Our results suggest that IEBI is used to measure or assess visual attention while wiewing the movie that it is capable of simulating aspects of reallife experiences by visual attention. Thus, we expect IEBI to be used to measure or assess our visual attention, cognition, further emotion about not only movies, advertisements and other cultural contents but also cognitive science.