Eye Contact Question

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I know eye contact is very unnatural to a lot of us. Personally it makes my skin crawl. I do not like it, I do not understand it, and I find it completely . . . devoid of information I can use.

The question is not whether or not you guys like/dislike eye contact but

"Why exactly is eye contact so uncomfortable and so . . . devoid of usefulness?" Does anyone else ever wonder why eye contact is such a big uncomfortable and incomprehensible thing?

I found This Article (<--click here) That has very interesting insights. What do you guys think?

I have seen that article before, and it explained a lot. Yes, I do dislike prolonged eye contact, because I get this little lurch of dread somewhere in the pit of my stomach and I want to look away as if from brilliant light.

I have been trying to do it more now that I know about it. However, it still puzzles me as I try to work out what each minute variation means, even when it means nothing. It drives me nuts and makes me wish I never discovered that it was an issue.

keeping eye contact produces a feeling I can put my finger on.

I'm not entirely certain as to why I cannot make/maintain eye-contact. It is simply too uncomfortable and feels almost as if the person is trying to read your thoughts or analyze you somehow.

I personally look at people's foreheads instead of in their eyes, most people can't tell the difference.

It may be a cultural thing. At any rate it is very possible to creep neurotypicals out by maintaining too much eye contact.

Eye contact doesn't bother me unless I'm thinking very hard, at which point it has much the same effect as a loud sound or a flash of light.

Context: I'm an Aspie's dad with some traits, but NT.

NTs can tell a lot about context and emotion by reading people's eyes while they speak. They've done it almost since birth, and are completely unaware that they even do it. Minute changes in facial expression are analagous to emoticons in text.
Aspies find reading this hard/impossible.

So naturally NTs find it strange when something that is so "natural" to them is not followed by someone else. Of course there's nothing wrong with it, but people notice it. It's like suddenly seeing someone else walk around backwards- it's noticed because it breaks a convention that most people are unaware of.

Because NTs use eye contact to judge the context/feeling of someone while they're talking, eye contact becomes uncomfortable when the two of you are not talking. eg if there's a long pause in the conversation and eye contact is maintained, NTs then try to derive meaning from that. Why is the other person still looking at me? Are they obsessed with me? Is there a zit on my nose? I imagine it's the same discomfort some aspies feel about all eye contact (see, maybe we're not so different after all!)

I love the idea of looking at the forehead/eyebrows. Wearing sunglasses would help too

It is actually painful to me to make eye contact-it gives me a really weird feeling.

I feel I have a right to poor eye contact. I tend to look at the mouth because that is where the words come from. You can read the mouth to some extent. When I look at people's eyes in photos, I think they frequently look really sad or desperate.

I was reading a parenting book this week that described a programme for improving eye contact. One parent provides morsels of food on a fork, held in front of his/her eyes. If the child makes eye contact and maintains for 8 seconds, then the child gets the bite of food. The other parent measures the time and keeps tally. The child's performance is graphed, with stars when the number of eye contact episodes reaches new levels.

I can understand rewarding *real* social eye-contact, e.g. during conversation, allowing the child to talk about a pet topic, or while asking questions, but this seems like teaching a fake social imitation. (My own eye contact passes for quite good, but professional observers have said that they can tell that it is not made or maintained in the normal way).

People who do not have autism probably experience the same sensations if they attempt to maintain eye contact while kissing, during other intimate acts, or while disclosing something personal to a shrink.

Eye contact doesn't really me that uncomfortable, but I prefer to look around rather than at the person I'm speaking to(key word is prefer; I actually do make eye contact).