Eye Aversion and Mental Processing
A study by Phelps, Doherty-Sneddon, and Warnock concluded that children who avoid eye contact while considering their responses to questions are more likely to answer correctly than children who maintain eye contact. According to Doherty-Sneddon:
"Looking at faces is quite mentally demanding. We get useful information from the face when listening to someone, but human faces are very stimulating and all this takes processing. So when we are trying to concentrate and process something else that's mentally demanding, it's unhelpful to look at faces."Contrariwise, Doherty-Sneddon suggests that a blank stare indicates a lack of understanding.
Read more about this topic: Eye Contact
Famous quotes containing the words eye, aversion and/or mental:
“City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind’s eye the notion of a better life ahead.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)