TEXT A Whether the eyes are the
windows of the soul is debatable, that they are intensely important in
interpersonal communication is a fact. During the first two months of a baby’s
life, the stimulus that produces a smile is a pair of eyes. The eyes need not be
real; a mask with two dots will produce a smile. Significantly, a real human
face with no eyes will not motivate a smile, nor will the sight of only one eye
when the face is presented in profile. This attraction to eyes as opposed to the
nose or mouth continues as the baby matures. In one study, when American
four-year-olds were asked to draw people, 75 percent of them draw people with
mouths, but 99 percent of them draw people with eyes. In Japan, however, where
babies are carried on their mother’s back, infants do not acquire as much
attachment to eyes as they do in other cultures. As a result, Japanese adults
make little use of the face either to encode or decode meaning. In fact, Argyle
reveals that the proper place to focus one’s gaze during a conversation in Japan
is on the neck of one’s conversational partner. The role of eye
contact in a conversational exchange between two Americans is well defined.
Speakers make contact with the eyes of their listener for about one second, then
glance away as they talk; in a few moments they re-establish eye contact with
the listener or reassure themselves that their audience is still attentive, then
shift their gaze away once more. Listeners, meanwhile, keep their eyes on the
face of the speaker, allowing themselves to glance away only briefly. It is
important that they be looking at the speaker at the precise moment when the
speaker re-establishes eye contact. If they are not looking, the speaker assumes
that they are disinterested and either will pause until eye contact is resumed
or will terminate the conversation. Just how critical this eye maneuvering is to
the maintenance of conversational flow becomes evident when two speakers are
wearing dark glasses there may be a sort of traffic jam of words caused by
interruption, false starts, and unpredictable pauses. (362) Babies will not be stimulated to smile by a person ______.
A.whose front view is fully perceived B.whose face is covered with a mask C.whose face is seen from the side D.whose face is free of any covering