ATTENTION, AROUSAL, COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE AND LATERAL EYE MOVEMENTS

Lateral eye movements (LEMs) have been widely used as a measure of "hemisphericity", though evidence in support of the hemispheric asymmetry model as an explanation for LEMs is weak. The current study was initiated to gain a clearer understanding of the relationship of LEMs to self report variables of attention and arousal and to variables measuring cognitive performance.; Right-handed introductory psychology students (N = 64; equal numbers of women and men) filled out self report questionnaires in small groups. These tasks were the Tellegen Absorption Scale, a specially designed questionnaire on feelings, Mehrabian and Epstein's Questionnaire Measure of Empathic Tendency (Empathy), and Nideffer's test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS).; In the second session LEMs of individual participants were observed during a set of 25 questions in a face-to-face interview. Participants were also tested on the WAIS Digit Span Subtest, the WAIS Block Design Subtest, the Embedded Figures Test (EFT), and a specially designed Face Recognition Task.; Right looks was positively correlated with self report measures of focused attention--broad internal attention (TAIS), narrow attention (TAIS), concentration, and the ratio of concentration to distraction. There was no evidence that left looking is positively related to inner attentiveness, as defined by absorption and self report of vividness of imagery. In fact imagery was positively correlated with right looks, particularly for women.; There was some evidence that left looking was associated with emotional arousal in that empathy was positively correlated with left looks and negatively with right looks. Looking behavior was minimally related to the cognitive performance measures.; The results of an exploratory factor analysis of selected dependent variables supported the results of the correlational analysis. For all participants a right looking factor was present and included the variables right looks, an absence of left looks, and imagery.; In that LEMs are minimally related to cognitive performance, one cannot substantiate the claim that LEMs measure hemisphericity. Lateral eye movements are more closely related to attentional than to cognitive factors.