Don’t take eye contact for granted. How and when you make eye contact is more important than you think.
For the first time, scientists have identified the exact timing and pattern of gaze that signals a need for help — a discovery that could revolutionize how we design social robots and teach non-verbal communication.
Led by Dr. Nathan Caruana from the HAVIC Lab at Flinders University, the study involved 137 participants working on a simple block-building task alongside a virtual partner.
The team found that the most effective way to request assistance was a three-step gaze sequence:
- Look at the object
- Make eye contact
- Glance back at the object.
This sequence made people more likely to interpret the gaze as a call for help.
“It’s not just how often someone looks at you or whether they look at you last,” says Dr. Caruana in the report.
“It’s the context of those eye movements that makes them feel meaningful and communicative.”
Interestingly, participants responded to the gaze sequence the same way whether it came from a human or a robot.
This suggests that our brains are naturally wired to pick up on these cues, no matter the source.
That insight could be huge for tech designers building virtual assistants or robots for classrooms, workplaces or homes.
Eye Contact in General
Meeting a person’s gaze plays a big role in non-verbal communication.
Better understanding eye contact could improve training in environments where clear communication is critical — like sports or noisy industrial settings.
It could also be especially helpful for people who rely heavily on visual cues, such as those who are deaf or autistic.
This builds on previous findings from the HAVIC Lab, which showed that our brains are already tuned to respond to social signals, including those from non-human agents.
As of 2025, the team is digging deeper into other factors that shape how we interpret gaze, like how long eye contact lasts or how many times it happens.
Even subtle gaze movements are “building blocks of connection,” says Dr. Caruana.
If scientists can better understand these movements, this can help in the design of more intuitive technologies as well as teach clearer communication to everybody.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical and fitness topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer. In 2022 she received a diagnosis of Level 1 Autism Spectrum Disorder.
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