Ever heard a strange noise and immediately start scouring the room with your eyes looking for it? It’s an instinctual response, so you’ve probably never given it much thought. But our eyes love to move in the same direction as our hearing for a good reason.

Eyes prove to be almost as useful as ears when it comes to understanding each other in noisy places - Image Credit: Jacob Lund via Shutterstock / HDR tune by Universal-Sci

We’ve all been there - after-work drinks, sitting around a table, struggling to hear the conversation that’s going on between your colleagues. And though you’ll probably point the finger at the blaring background music for your aural impediment, there’s likely another cause at play.

Over the past few years, a number of studies have shown how your eye position can considerably impact what you pick up with your ears. More recently however, researchers have been exploring how who you’re looking at can impact your ability to understand what others are saying.

According to a study conducted by Boston University, our ability to interpret conversation is somewhat hindered when we’re not looking at the speaking subject.

A ‘cocktail party’ listening situation refers to that of which there are four competing speakers in addition to the one you’re trying to listen to. The university’s experiment was set up to conclude whether or not eye position can affect our ability to decipher conversation in such an environment. Turns out, it does.

Various acoustic studies have demonstrated that the location of your eyes identifies where your visual spatial attention is aimed at. - Image Credit: Virginia Best

Virginia Best and her colleagues conducted the study by sitting participants down with five loudspeakers in front of them. These loudspeakers were spaced 15 degrees apart, and emitted sequences of digits, which the participant was asked to repeat back.

In some cases, participants were asked to keep their eyes fixated on the target speaker, while others were asked to look at a nontarget speaker. Turns out, performance was significantly better when participants were looking at the target loudspeaker than anywhere else.

The study has proved a model example of how what we’re looking at can measurably impact what we’re hearing. So next time you’re at a cocktail party, a restaurant, or a meeting, don’t just listen with your ears - keep your eyes peeled too.

If you’re interested in learning more about the study be sure to check out the paper listed below

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