What counts as eye contact?

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I was doing an online AS quiz thing and there was a question about knowing what colour people's eyes were or exactly what their faces look like, and it struck me I have no idea what people's eyes look like. When I remember people, even those I know well, it's usually a blurry outline of size, hairstyle, facial hair etc.

At least recently, I've been thinking my eye contact is good, because I look at people, but I don't think I look right at their eyes..is this eye contact, or is looking at people's faces considered eye contact too?

I know I look around the room a lot, usually because I'm focussing on a pattern somewhere. Like the other night I was talking to someone about my baby cousin and she turned around and started reading the whiteboard behind her because she thought I'd been gesturing with my eyes to it.

I've asked my boyfriend but he's deaf so he looks at people's mouths to lip read and doesn't know.

"Eye contact" means you look directly into the other's eyes.

Looking directly at one eye?

Both. How people manage to do that, I will never understand.

I can look directly into someone's eyes only as long as I'm concentrating on what I'm saying or on what they are saying. Then it is almost like staring out into space -- I'm only vaguely aware of what I appear to be looking at.

When I took classes, I was quite aware that I made many of my profs extremely nervous because of this. I was listening to what they were saying with enough concentration that I wasn't really aware of where I was looking which was invariably following the motion in front of the room. Many would occasionally falter in their lecture and my focus would shift out of my listening mode and I would then notice that they would be looking back at me with what would appear to be a puzzled look. Of course, once I realized that I was looking into their eyes, I'd look away.

I've been wondering about this myself. I have bad face recognition, and tend to remember people by hairstyles or glasses or facial hair. I can't really conjure up a good mental image of the faces of anyone I know, but I could give a fairly good description of people's haircuts, and different outfits they wear.

While I do look in the direction of someone's face some of the time in a conversation, I usually only notice their face when I am listening, and not always even then. When I am talking I tend to look around the room a lot too. It is almost impossible for me to talk (or think) while making direct eye contact, but I often talk while just looking in the general direction of their face, but I don't think I'm really picking up on facial cues then unless they are pretty blatant.

To me it seems like I can either talk, or listen, or read facial expressions, but not two at the same time. I recently realized that when I look at a person, it is usually just to indicate that I am listening, rather than to actually get any information from their face.

I don't know if this counts as eye contact either, I'd be interested to hear how it is for other people.

Eye contact is looking into people's eyes and modulating your looking into people's eyes so you are not staring into their eyes all the time but enough of the time to send them the message that you are engaged in interacting with them.

:S

This is something I just realized recently. I could not tell you the eye color of anyone I know. Not even my family! I rarely focus on peoples eyes, so eye color is something that I just don't "see".

I could tell you the eye colour of my wife and a guy at work and that is about it. I was trying to see if I could force myself to do the eye contact thing with the guy at work today and I could...but realised I had not heard a word he was saying and had to ask him to repeat himself - Dmanit!

I also have trouble describing people faces. I was once asked what does my boss look like. I thought for a minute and said he looked 'just regular, really' - I am hopeless lol.

It would be pretty easy to say the eye colour of almost all of the people at my old school - brown. That's because most people were from Asian countries. I couldn't say what shade of brown any particular person's were though, or the eye shape or how long their eye lashes were.

I remember suddenly realising that a music teacher's eyes were icy-blue. I'd had that class for two years at that point.

I also used to think that both my parent's eyes were green (because mine were ). It surprised me when my mother said her eyes were blue, and only in recent years have I seen it for myself.

I don't think I've ever noticed what color anyone's eyes are. If others hadn't mentioned it to me, I probably wouldn't even know that my eyes are blue.