Imagine a crowded room where everyone is focused on their own conversations. In this sea of voices, maintaining eye-contact might not be enough to capture someone’s attention. A recent study has revealed that the impact of eye-contact on grabbing attention depends heavily on the surrounding context. It’s like trying to stand out in a busy marketplace by just waving your hands – sometimes it works, but other times you need to do something more attention-grabbing. The researchers discovered that when people are engaged in a task or being immersed in their environment, making eye-contact alone may not be sufficient to divert their focus. Instead, other factors come into play, such as the relevance and saliency of the stimuli. This suggests that eye-contact is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to capturing attention. Understanding how different stimuli interact with one another can help us create more effective ways of engaging and communicating with others. To dive deeper into this research, check out the full article!

Does eye-contact always attract attention? Not in every case, as a research team has recently shown. Why not? Because context matters.

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