{"id":6668450,"date":"2025-12-14T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=6668450"},"modified":"2025-12-07T09:42:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T14:42:36","slug":"the-attention-paradox-when-eye-contact-makes-thinking-harder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/the-attention-paradox-when-eye-contact-makes-thinking-harder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Attention Paradox: When Eye Contact Makes Thinking Harder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with a seemingly straightforward logical chain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>To learn in school, students need to <strong>pay attention<\/strong>. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But: how do teachers know <strong>IF<\/strong> they&#8217;re paying attention? <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Well: most of the time, most people are paying attention to the <strong>person or object they&#8217;re looking at<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So, teachers should explicitly <strong>direct students&#8217; gaze<\/strong>. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If students are looking at the teacher&#8211;or the book, or another student who&#8217;s answering a question&#8211;they&#8217;re probably paying attention. If they&#8217;re <em>paying attention<\/em>, they&#8217;re likelier to <em>learn<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This simple summary requires a few caveats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>First<\/strong>: different cultures have different norms around eye contact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Second<\/strong>: some people find eye contact intensely more difficult than others do. Students on the spectrum&#8211;for example&#8211;can find eyeball-to-eyeball focus overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In both these cases, we can and should make reasonable exceptions to any &#8220;you have to look at me right now&#8221; policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, many (many!) pedagogical approaches require students to look at a person, passage, slide, or screen. For what it&#8217;s worth, I myself think that&#8217;s an entirely reasonable expectation (with the caveats noted above).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, WAIT JUST A MINUTE. What if eye contact <em>interferes with thinking<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Intriguing Data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0010027716302360\">study done in Japan<\/a> back in 2016 raises this alarming possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers gave adults a kind of verbal completion task. Each participant heard a long list of nouns: for instance, &#8220;milk.&#8221; After each one, they had to respond with an appropriate verb: say, &#8220;drink.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In some cases, the noun\/verb pair is so simple as to require little thought. The &#8220;milk\/drink&#8221; duo is a low-challenge task. In other cases, the mental load went up. Some nouns imply many possible verbs. The noun &#8220;soup&#8221; invites either &#8220;make&#8221; or &#8220;eat&#8221; or &#8220;drink.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even more challenging, participants sometimes chose obscure verbs. When hearing the noun &#8220;list,&#8221; most people responded with the verb &#8220;make.&#8221; Others offered the verb &#8220;be on&#8221;: a choice that&#8217;s plausible but rare&#8211;and implies greater cognitive work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Crucially, the researchers measured how long the participants took to generate those verbs. They assumed&#8211;reasonably&#8211;that slower verb generation implied heavier cognitive lifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where does the eye contact come in? An excellent question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the participants did this noun\/verb work, they watched videos of faces. In fact, they were specifically instructed to <em>look at <\/em>the faces in those videos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Half of the time, those faces were looking directly at the camera; in other words, making direct eye contact with the viewer. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>And half of the time, those faces were looking off to the side.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So here&#8217;s the question: <em>did the <strong>eye-contact video <\/strong>have an effect on the <strong>cognitive work <\/strong>required to generate verbs<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Results and Implications<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes, yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is: the participants needed extra time to generate verbs if <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a) they came up with the <em>most challenging verbs<\/em>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AND<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>b) they <em>made eye contact <\/em>with the camera-facing faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In brief: if thinking is already challenging, adding eye contact makes thinking even MORE difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have found this study fascinating, and it&#8217;s made me reconsider my own expectations for classroom eye contact. I do typically expect my students to look at me (or the board or the book or the classmate), and I do occasionally cue them to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This study makes me open to a few potential exceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If I have <strong>asked students a difficult question<\/strong>, the additional demand for eye contact might complicate their thought processes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If a student is developing a particularly <strong>sophisticated answer or question<\/strong>, s\/he might need some cognitive headroom&#8230;and therefore the freedom to look away.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Eye contact helps students focus outward; looking away seems to help them focus inward. Both have their place in learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">As Always, Caveats <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I should be clear about the limitations of my argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>First<\/strong>: this eye-contact study doesn&#8217;t make any claims at all about classroom teaching. I&#8217;m extrapolating, combining this study with my own experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"293\" src=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AdobeStock_374891817-1024x293.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6668502\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AdobeStock_374891817-1024x293.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AdobeStock_374891817-300x86.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AdobeStock_374891817-768x219.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AdobeStock_374891817-1536x439.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AdobeStock_374891817-2048x585.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Second<\/strong>: each classroom and school will have its own dynamics. The culture and pedagogy of your school, and the age and neuro-profile of your students will shape your application of this broad principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Third<\/strong>: because norms around eye-contact vary among cultures, I should emphasize that the original research was done in Japan. (As far as I can tell, this study hasn&#8217;t been replicated.) In fact, about 1\/5th of the participants in the study dropped out because they couldn&#8217;t maintain base-level eye contact. Application of this research finding to other cultural contexts requires close awareness to this cultural framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With those cautions noted, I myself arrive at this pair of conclusions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In most cases, teachers can and should focus students&#8217; attention by deliberately focusing their gaze.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When students need to THINK HARD, they may need to break eye contact to gather their thoughts more effectively.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A bit poetically, I might put it this way: when they&#8217;re thinking deeply, I can let my students stop focusing outward so that they can focus intensely inward. Deeper thought, it seems, benefits from such inward gaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Kajimura, S., &amp; Nomura, M. (2016). When we cannot speak: Eye contact disrupts resources available to cognitive control processes during verb generation.&nbsp;<em>Cognition<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>157<\/em>, 352-357.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s start with a seemingly straightforward logical chain: This simple summary requires a few caveats. First: different cultures have different norms around eye contact. Second: some people find eye contact intensely more difficult than others do. Students on the spectrum&#8211;for example&#8211;can find eyeball-to-eyeball focus overwhelming. In both these cases, we can and should make reasonable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6668502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31,15,264],"class_list":["post-6668450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-attention","tag-classroom-advice","tag-eye-contact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6668450"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6668503,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668450\/revisions\/6668503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6668502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6668450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6668450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6668450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}