Illustration of Eye Access Cues

Facts about Eye Access Cues

Science is often measured by the practical applicability of its results. To give the eye access cues some relevance in this regard, here are some backgrounds from research.

The model of eye access cues does not claim general validity. As already mentioned, it can indeed be reversed for left-handed individuals, and it may not be applicable in individual cases.

More important than the mechanical application of the NLP 'eye' model is the fundamental idea behind this model: to carefully observe eye movements in others and to give them a systematic meaning for internal processes.

For poets, the eyes are the windows to the soul. For a group of modern neuropsychologists, they seem to correspondingly serve as windows to the left and right hemispheres of the brain. In the course of his clinical studies (1964), the psychologist M. E. Day noticed that certain patients looked to the right particularly often when answering questions, while others looked to the left particularly often. Based on this and further research, Day hypothesized that the direction of these preferred lateral eye movements (LEMs – from English lateral eye movements) is related to certain personality traits of a person.

Five years after M. E. Day, psychologist Paul Bakan from Simon Fraser University in Canada published data that confirmed Day's considerations. Furthermore, Bakan noted that the preferred eye movement is also related to hemispheric asymmetry. Bakan's hypothesis is based on the well-researched fact that lateral eye movements are controlled by centers in the frontal lobe of the respective contralateral brain hemisphere. He suspected that cognitive activities that primarily occur in only one of the two hemispheres trigger eye movements in the opposite direction and that these movements can therefore also be seen as signs of the relative activity of a person's hemispheres (that is: if a person looks more to the left during a certain thought process, it indicates that they are using the right hemisphere particularly strongly in that thought process).

Accordingly, people who often or in most situations look to the left are individuals in whom the right hemisphere dominates. In right-looking individuals, this indicates a preferred use of the left hemisphere. Bakan considered the direction of the preferred eye movement as a typical characteristic of a personality.

Gary Schwarz and his colleagues from Yale University (1975) studied the lateral eye movements when answering questions about feelings. Among other things, linguistic-emotional questions ('Which emotion is stronger for you?') and those with pictorial-emotional imagery ('When you imagine your father's face, what feelings do you experience?') were used. The result showed – in accordance with earlier findings – that emotional questions triggered more LEMs (eye movements) to the left. The fact that a stronger right-brain expression is observed during emotional activities was also confirmed here. In the emotional domain, it was shown that individuals who were cancer patients or chronically ill exhibited a more active right hemisphere in most cases. Left-right eye movements helped to voluntarily balance the hemispheres, which was equivalent to an improved mental, emotional, and physical state.

Application possibilities

In intensive research, eye access cues can indeed be of great practical use. First, eye movements can serve as an external indicator for exploring human brain activity. More significant scientific results in this field would primarily help to better structure our thinking and use it more purposefully. Based on brilliant 'exemplary cases' and the analysis of their thought patterns, concepts for the targeted use of representation systems could be developed.

This system could be an everyday part of school life. Eye access cues could indicate the thought patterns of students. For students with learning difficulties, it could concretely show where they are using an inappropriate thought approach. Additionally, one could construct an individual learning strategy in this way. Such approaches are hardly considered in the current design of curricula. Concepts of this kind would not only help students but could also be applied to all social groups from managers to assembly line workers.

One can recognize how a person perceives through their eye movements. By analyzing individual perception patterns, one can use their perception more efficiently and purposefully. For example, if a musician manages to perceive almost exclusively auditorily while playing music, their performance can be significantly improved.

Eye access cues can address where other analysis methods fail. Thus, one can learn more about the thinking and feeling of severely disabled individuals through eye access cues. In classical psychotherapy, they can contribute to treating clinical pictures. An application in sexual therapy could also be conceivable, to determine whether disturbances arose from an impairment of the perception image.

Some jurists came up with the idea of applying eye movements in criminology to expose offenders based on their eye movements or at least to check whether they are currently remembering or freely inventing a fact. I might not go that far, but this distinction could be interesting as a guideline.

We have outlined a wealth of possible application fields for eye access cues. This may suggest that this could be possible overnight without much effort. To come closer to realization, a more engaged and elaborate research effort would be desirable.

Excursus: Counterarguments against eye access cues

Excerpt from the 'Practitioner Handbook' (= yellow pages) by Klaus Grochowiak

There have been some studies by psychologists that aimed to investigate whether there are actually eye access cues or not. Some of these studies concluded that there is no such thing as eye access cues. However, these studies contained systematic research errors and are therefore not further relevant to our work, as they have refuted things that were not claimed at all. The following will explain the details of the theory about eye access cues, which are important for dealing competently with them – including the most common counterarguments.

• 1. The lead system is different from the representation system that was asked about. Many people can, for example, not directly access an auditory-recalled information, but first need an inner image before they can recall the associated voice (consequence: Vk → Ae).
• 2. A person can respond to a question about Ae with a synesthesia Vk → Ae, so that only the visual access is recognizable. The theory does not claim that one can always recognize the inner representation system solely through eye access cues.
• 3. When someone is asked about a visual memory, they can go into the visually constructed area. This does not mean that the person is lying; it can be a dissociated or a gestalt memory.
• 4. Some people defocus when they visually remember or construct. They set their eyes to 'infinity' to reduce external stimuli and better perceive inner images – for example, when daydreaming.
• 5. In some studies, there was no clear distinction between outward-directed and internal eye movements.
• 6. Many people go into the same representation system first, regardless of the question, such as auditory-digital or visually constructed. This is often an individual thinking habit.

These points show: The model of eye access cues is not a rigid schema, but a tool to better understand individual perception and thinking patterns.