L,T&C - Eye Contact Flashcards
What is verbal communication
Verbal communication is any communication involving spoken or written words.
How much of communication is verbal and non verbal
Only half of communication is verbal and the other half is non- verbal communication (NVC).
What is eye contact
When two people look at each other’s eyes at the same time.
How does eye contact help conversation
Kendon found that speakers looked away when they were about to speak and gave prolonged eye contact when about to finish.
Shows eye contact encourages turn-taking in conversation.
How does eye contact signal attraction
Conway et al. found that people who use eye contact are judged as more attractive even with a negative facial expression.
How does eye contact express emotion
Adams and Kleck found that participants judged emotions of joy and anger as more intense when shown a picture of someone gazing straight at them as opposed to gazing away.
They judged emotions of fear and sadness as more intense when the gaze in the picture was averted.
Evaluate eye contact (real world)
A strength is that studies can explain an important feature of autism.
People with autism have difficulty communicating with others because they often do not use eye contact.
Knowing the importance of eye contact means that people with autism could be taught these skills.
Evaluate eye contact (rating scales)
A weakness is the use of rating scales to make judgements.
Studies in this area rely on people rating their views of ‘attractiveness’ and ‘intensity of emotion’, and these are open to bias and interpretation.
This suggests that studies of eye contact may produce biased evidence.
Evaluate eye contact (artificial studies)
Another weakness is that studies of eye contact involve quite artificial tasks.
In Kendon’s study, participants were asked to get to know someone as part of the experiment.
This means the results may lack validity as they do not reflect what would happen in everyday life.
