does anybody look at mouthes instead of eyes?

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If I look at someone I usually look at their mouth. Usually I don't look at people when i'm talking to them though.

me! I've done this for my whole life and never realized it was an ASD trait until about a year ago.

When I am talking, I look in people in the eye very briefly and move down to just below the eye. When someone is talking to me, I look at their mouth.

I'll look at peoples' faces to see if they're looking at me or not. I've learned to do this a little more since i started working, because if someone stands out in the open staring at me(and they usually also have their eyebrows up), then they usually need something. I've learned a lot of social tricks at my job (To bad it doesn't go much further than shallow things like that that don't translate into being able to built social relationships. I can make acquaintances pretty well these days, though.) But if they are looking at me, i then have an urge to look away or at their mouth. Sometimes at work or in other busy places when it gets loud in the area near me, i have a hard time hearing them unless they are standing very close or have a very loud and clear voice... So i think then it can be sort of an attempt at lip reading to help me figure out what they're saying. But, again, i suck at lip reading.. so i don't think it really helps much. I'd rather not look most people in the face at all while we're talking. I try to find something in the environment to look at a lot of the time, though. This is usually easy if a customer is asking about a television, a game, or, well, any particular item that is physically there. Then i can just look at the item and answer their questions, and it actually makes sense in the situation because it's the item we are talking about. It might still come off strangely because i think other people still look at eachother in those situations, but at least then it probably seems like i'm focused on the thing that they are asking about and not like i'm just staring into space or not paying attention to them. There are certain people i can look at in the face easier than others though. I don't know if it's something about how i'm feeling at the moment or something about the person, but it seems like sometimes i'll be looking at a person's mouth and even briefly glance at their eyes from time to time, and with others i'm not even very comfortable looking at their mouth. I can make eye contact with family members sometimes, depending on how i'm feeling, but even with them it's more natural to look at their mouth.

I think it mostly comes down to this: it makes more sense pay attention to where the voice is coming from than to what direction the person speaking to you is looking.. That is, if you're not getting or able to utilize all of the subtle eye-information that NTs are, anyway.

We aren't NTs, right, so we don't need to do all the things NTs do...

Thank you... you'd spoken what I wanted to say, in a more precise manner.

yep anything to not look at the eyes, my parents say have no problem looking in the eyes but what the fail to see is my eyes darting back and forth when i look at them.

i even have a hard time with posters that have people on them cause i can't stand the eyes, my current posters are a 2010 camaro, a dragon, and a pheonix, cause animal eyes don't bother me and when i say animal it has to be an animal, athromorphics still bother me like sonic and others.

I make very little eye contact. Abt 5 yrs ago my grown son asked why I didn't make eye contact so I started to force myself to. I can handle eye contact a little bit now but mostly look at the mouth. I was just diagnosed a week or so ago and finally have answers to many questions that I've had about myself all my life. Lack of eye contact is one. I have no desire to make eye contact for myself. I only do it to appear socially acceptable and not appear too wierd. One problem that I have with eye contact is that I lose track of what I'm saying and notice how the person's eye look. I can carry a conversation better w/o eye contact. Sometimes I even have to cover my face to stay in a conversation.

Yes...or their forehead. I try hard to keep looking them in the eyes though because stangers that don't know me that well think I'm ignoring them because I'm not looking at them/in their eyes. I CANT IT HURTS!

I look at the mouth when someone is speaking but, if I'm not careful, I become fascinated by the movement and then miss what they are saying. I prefer to not even look at a person when I speak with them but am told that comes off as arrogance or disinterest.

I have to look at people's mouths in order to understand what they're saying. I thought I was partly deaf, but every time I take a hearing test, my hearing is slightly better than average. I still tell people I'm hard of hearing because for purposes of conversation It's essentially true. I don't know why I can hear the "boop" and "beep" of the hearing test but not hear half the words people are saying, but there it is. It's worse when I'm tired -- sometimes when I'm very tired I could be staring at someone's mouth and they could be enunciating clearly, but all I hear is gibberish. This makes me think it's less likely to be something wrong with my ears, and is instead something wrong between my ears. Luckily I work with a bunch of engineers who dislike verbal communication anyway, and prefer asynchronous methods of communication like IM or email. That suits me just fine.

When I've needed to make eye contact, though, I can. It doesn't hurt or make me uncomfortable, I just can't understand half of what people are saying when I'm looking at their eye.

of course. I look at the mouth and I look away.
Off medication I look at the floor or wall. I do this still, with people I do not know.

There is a study somewhere that I read, which revealed that ASD people focus much more on the lower half of the face and often concentrate the focus around the mouth and chin which lessens the intensity. Non ASD people participated in the study tended to focus more on eyes and eye region.

I look at other parts of their face, especially the mouth, or I just don't look at them at all. I try to make occasional eye contact, but I tend to get distracted by deciding when and how many times I should glance at a person's eyes.

Also, do any of you find yourself doing this when you're watching tv or a movie? I've noticed that I avoid looking at people's eyes on screen sometimes.

Amen to that. I know they have eyes - but I cannot look at them. In fact I have a heavy eye issue - I cringe when I see a close-up picture of an eye [the films seem to be obsessed with doing that worse as my obsessions]. I cannot look at your eye to help you get something out of it, and I die if the ey guy tries to peel the lid back. My siblings used to cross eyes at me just to see the reaction.

Bottom line - if I have too I will do an appendectomy on you with a kitchen knife and not be bothered, but I do not see how ANYONE could do eye surgery.

I do this too!! I've done several courses in "interview techniques" and "customer service" over the years, and I've learnt how to do eye contact - It wears me out though!

One of my special subjects is knitting, and I've joined a few clubs, and despite the fact I can knit most things without looking at my hands, NOBODY thinks it odd that I look at my hands, and that I don't make much eye contact.

I love eyes, there's so many pretty ones out there, but I can't understand why it's so hard to look at them during conversation.

Yes, but I find the movement distracting from what they're saying, so I started to blur my vision and looked at their blurred face.

When I am listening to them, I often look at their mouthes to keep me focused on what they are saying, however when I talk, I usually don't look at them at all, I'll stare in some other direction at something immobile. If it is a situation (such as interfacing with my boss at work) I usually try to look at his face in general when speaking to him, but it is kind of distracting.