Hmm, Let Me Think...

[stoutfellow]

In a discussion of body language on Language Log, David Nash is quoted as saying that "My off the cuff reaction is that flicking the eyes up and to the right like this feels like a help to memory retrieval".

When I'm trying to remember something, I look up and to the left; looking right feels very odd to me.

Am I weird or something? What do you do?

Comments

[mukhtar.livejournal.com]

I think he got it wrong. I've always been told up and to the left is memory retreival, up and to the right is making something up or using the imagination.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Left.

[coyotegestalt.livejournal.com]

I think I look pretty much straight up, actually.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Oh, heavens! I'm ambiocular (g)! I don't know what it says about *my* thought processes, but in thinking about it, when talking with someone, where I look to desperately retrieve that strand of thought depends on where the other person is standing/sitting. I tend to look *away* from that person, so either to left or right...

Tilt

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

Here, p alone is memory. Tilt alone is cogitation. Up/tilt is retro-cogitation -- "now what would I have done with my keys yesterday when I had my hands full of grocery bags? "

Interesting to watch dogs, birds, etc use head tilt without eyes up.
Very short term memory among the lower orders. "I will figure this situation out. But I won't even bother retrieving experience of similar situations..."

I'm not at all sure left or right tilt is significant.

All three of my kids combine eye roll with spinning in circles -- as if the answer might be an image on the ceiling with the projector whirling along on a record turntable...

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

"Interesting to watch dogs, birds, etc use head tilt without eyes up."

It generally seems to me, when my birds are tilting their heads, that it expresses being intrigued by something.