Talking And Maintaining Eye Contact Simultaneously Slows Down The Brain

Not maintaining eye contact while having a conversation has been linked to many personality problems -- low self-confidence being one of them. It is also thought to be impolite and sometimes an indication of telling a lie. A recent study done by the scientists at Kyoto University negates all such beliefs and provides the physiological and scientific explanation on why people find it difficult to maintain eye contact while talking to others.

According to the results obtained from the study done on 26 individuals who volunteered to take the computerized test, disengaging eye contact is a method by which the body avoids overloading the brain, The Inverse reported.

The volunteers were asked to participate in a word association game with a computer. They were all shown a noun word, one at a time, and were asked to respond immediately with a verb function related to that word. The words were preselected by the researchers and were of varying levels of difficulty. They were asked to do all of this while maintaining eye contact with a computerized face shown to them on the screen.

It was found that the volunteers took more time to respond to harder words. But the time taken to respond decreased significantly if they broke eye contact with the computerized face, which was interacting with them during the experiment, according to Economic Times.

The study results were published recently in the Cognition Journal. After careful analysis of the results, the scientists suggested that performing the dual function of thinking words and maintaining eye contact strains the brain. That is why the brain decides to compromise one function, i.e., eye contact, so that it can focus on the other task.

The scientists say that breaking eye contact should not be considered as disrespectful or linked with low self-confidence. If someone is breaking eye contact, that can also mean that he/she must be trying to think of words or form sentences to carry on the conversation.