Scientists find a surprising clue to how well preschoolers can switch mental gears
Could something as simple as blinking reflect how a young child’s brain is developing? A study of preschoolers found that higher blink rates were linked to better rule-switching and more activity in the right prefrontal cortex.
A recent study in Communications Psychology suggests that the number of times a preschooler naturally blinks per minute may provide insight into the maturation of their brain and development of self-control. Researchers found that children who blinked more frequently tended to perform better on a test of mental flexibility and showed greater activity in the prefrontal cortex, a region crucial for these cognitive abilities.
Blinking is linked to arousal networks and dopamine activity, both of which impact executive function, which is a set of higher-order mental skills that aid in holding information, resisting distractions, and switching between tasks. Executive function develops rapidly between the ages of three and six and predicts later academic success, social adaptation, and overall health.
The study involved 113 Japanese children aged 35 to 80 months who played a card game called the Dimensional Change Card Sort task, which assessed their ability to switch between different sorting rules. The researchers found that as children's blink rates increased, so did their cognitive flexibility and prefrontal specialization, suggesting that spontaneous eye-blink rate could serve as a simple, non-invasive marker of early cognitive and brain development.
Written by urgent.news from PsyPost's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
