I sometimes look at the mouth as well. This may be to do with me being speach-deaf. If there is any background noise then I can hear people talking and who's talking but can not make any sense of what they are saying. My hearing is very good (in fact, in audiometry tests, my right ear is better than average and my left ear is much, much better than average) but what I think is happening is that I hear everything and my brain can't process what it needs to and gets overloaded. It's similar with my vision - if I wear slighly darkened lenses then I can see far more detail in my surroundings by blocking out some of the sensory information.
So, yes, I sometimes look at mouths when I do look at the people talking (I usually look elsewhere). I have tried to fake looking at eyes but I end up staring and then remember that I need to look away from time to time. Thus, I end up concentrating on looking at the eyes, then looking away and back...before I know it I am concentrating so hard on that that I don't know what the person has been talking about. I'll tell you right now that this is not a good strategy in job interviews.
I'll tell you what I look at most, though: if the person I'm talking to has some distinguishing mark, mole, wart, broken tooth, deformity, food stuck to their face...anything like that, then I'll stare right at that all the time I talk to them.
I've been told I can be "rude" in this way. I don't mean it, though.
Last edited by Astilius on 20 Mar 2007, 12:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.