Starry eyed?
Reviewed by Jennifer K Stott

Attentive listening and active listening skills suggest that eye movement is an important factor in subject engagement. Indeed, when asked, AI suggests gaze is held for 70% of the time when listening. Although the route of this percentage is unclear, we do know that previous studies have considered just pupil size when assessing engagement. This study considered other factors of eye movement with comparative cohorts, asking some interesting questions not without the possibility of improvements. However, it makes for a stimulating item of research. They assessed the listening effort by monitoring not only pupil size but also: fixation duration, gaze dispersion and saccade rate of the eyes. Eye movements decreased with increased speech masking. Even in the absence of a speaker to direct our gaze, our eagerness to attend to a subject could be seen in our stare.

Eye movements of younger and older adults decrease during story listening in background noise.
Herrmann B, Scharf F, Widmann A. 
HEAR RES
2025;468:109447.