Eye accessing cues and its scientific basis
Think about some time when you have noticed that people move their eyes while they talk and listen. These eye movements do not occur randomly. Each movement of the eyes functions to indicate certain neurological precessing.
The patterns go as follows: when most right-handed people move their eyes up and to the left, they call pictures previously seen. When they move their eyes up and to the right, they construct an image putting together pieces which they may not have ever seen.
Eyes moving level in the head to the left indicates recalling of remembered words. Eyes moving level to the right indicate the constructing of sentences. If the eyes go down and to the left, the person engages in an internal dialogue – usually about highly valued values and principles. Here a person has a synesthesia (combination, merging) of two senses – they speak feeling words to themselves as the consider something of importance. When eyes move down and to the right, they access kinesthetic awareness (feelings, sensations) and emotions. Eyes centered and defocused often indicates the person is making pictures; however, many also process internal dialogue this way.
The eye movements and positions do not create the internal experience, but reflect and indicate internal neurological information processing. yet because the brain and nervous system work interactively as a holistic system, when we consciously manage our lateral eye movements, this can help to stimulate the corresponding portion of our representational brain. Thus when I look up and to the left, I stimulate that part of my brain that stores pictures from my past. Ask a family member to recall their first bicycle and notice where the eyes go.
Woodsmall (1990) wrote about the scientific basis for eye accessing cues:
“Scientists have discovered a basic and ancient mechanism in the depth of the brain that physiologically relates eye movements to sensory memory recall. Called the “reticular formation,” this dense bundle of nerves serves as a sensory filter for the brain. deciding which messages are significant enough to be sent to the conscious mind for attention.
The nerves that control eye movements, a set of three nerves (the oculomotor, the trochler and the abducens) which we’ll refer to simply as the oculomotor nerves, originate and derive from the reticular formation area. It is thought that whenever the eye is moved to a particular position, either instinctively or intentionally, the reticular formation is activated to send a beam or impulse to the brain to stimulate a particular sensory motor call.”
