The Ultimate Body Language Book

their thoughts. For most right-handed people, eye movement up and to the left is a signal that one is
accessing a visual memory whereas movement up and right means that a person is trying to construct a
visual image. Eyes either right or left, but still level, indicate an auditory process such as remembering
sounds and words. Eyes down and left indicate internal dialogue or self talk, and down and right
indicate a tactile or visceral feeling. When the eyes are straight ahead, unfocused or dilated, they signal
that visual or sensory information is being accessed.
These eye patterns appear to be consistent for all right handed people throughout the world except for a
few minor exceptions. Many left handed people though tend to reverse from left to right and access
information opposite to right handed people. Therefore, they tend to look down and left to access
feelings instead of up and left.
These patterns can provide us with information that have predictive powers. By watching and reading
the eye direction of other people we can draw inferences about how they are accessing the information
which can be particularly helpful when trying to determine their intentions. Lie detection comes first to
mind, but we can also deduce how one is internalizing thought by what their eyes are doing. As it
pertains to lying, for example, right and up (constructed visual) and right and level (constructed
auditory) both show that a person is trying to create or imagine new details about something whereas
left and up (visual remembered) and left and level (auditory remembered) indicating that a person is
remembering something that had actually happened.
A word of caution though is that it is not all that easy to follow someone’s eyes and some of the
expressions last just fractions of seconds. Not only this, but people can access multiple parts of their
brain to recall the similar ideas. Some people also have habitual eye movements that have developed
over time so a person that is highly visual might look up and left, or right, regardless of the type of
question being asked. Someone who is kinesthetically oriented might look down and right all the time
even in reference to a thought about music or sound. However, even these cues can give us indications
of the
types of mind they have and therefore the type of person they are. By using eye gaze in NLP we can
better tailor presentations to key in on more visual or auditory elements as required by our listeners.
Here is a list of questions to help determine what type of learner you are working with in order to better
help you tailor information: