Wearable Eye Tracking Unlocks the Hidden Language of the Gaze
Research Digest
November 5, 2025
Video: Two people seated face to face, looking at each other while wearing Neon eye tracking glasses. Courtesy of Dr. Mehtap Cakir.
Human gaze is a language without words, a fundamental pillar of human connection. It signals attention, conveys emotion, and reveals intent, with behaviours ranging from deliberate looks to involuntary physiological responses that can synchronise us with others.
Studying this dynamic social language as it unfolds naturally, however, requires moving beyond the confines of desktop / lab-based eye tracking. In this digest, we explore three recent studies that exemplify this modern approach, each leveraging wearable technology like Neon eye tracking glasses to gain new insights.
By capturing the raw, unfiltered data of interaction, researchers have been able to decode gaze not just as a visual mechanism but as a fundamental social enabler. Together, these findings reveal the intricate ways we connect, showing us a side of human interaction that is often felt but rarely seen.
A New View of Infant Gaze
Figure 1: An infant and caregiver in the HOME Lab wearing Neon head-mounted eye trackers. The purple crosshair shows where the infant is looking. Face detection was applied to the scene video, allowing researchers to determine when faces were visible to the infant and when the infant actually looked at them. Source: Kaplan, B. E., Martinez, E., & Yu, C. (2025). Using Head-Mounted Eye Tracking to Examine Infant Face Looking During Naturalistic Freeplay. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47).
At one end of the spectrum, our eyes act as purposeful tools for directing attention and signalling intent. A study by Kaplan, Martinez, and Yu (2025) at the University of Texas used Neon to address this challenge. By outfitting both parents and infants with eye trackers during natural free play, researchers could observe how babies actually encounter faces. The data showed that a caregiver's face was in the infant's field of view about 23% of the time. But when a face did appear, infants were quick to look, with nearly 40% of their face looks occurring within a quarter of a second.
This finding challenges the idea of the infant as a passive observer. Instead, it frames the infant’s gaze as an active, purposeful tool for social engagement. The study's authors note that infants appear to actively orient their heads and bodies to bring a face into view when they intend to look at it. This deliberate act of looking is a key enabler of early social interaction and development.
Therapeutic Gaze: A Tale of Two Perspectives
Figure 2: Authors MR and RH wearing Neon eye tracking glasses (faces blurred for privacy). Left panels show the world camera video, while right panels display the corresponding gaze and fixations overlay, indicating where attention was focused during the session. Source: Rubin, M., Hickson, R., Suen, C., & Vaishnav, S. (2025). Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 18(4), 36.
In psychotherapy research by Rubin and colleagues (2025), graduate students, role-playing therapists, and clients wore Neon during 15-minute sessions. Analysis revealed that therapists maintained a high rate of face gazing both while listening (57%) and while speaking (56%). In everyday conversation, people typically reduce face gazing while talking. Yet therapists sustained it, signalling attentiveness and engagement. This intentional use of gaze played a central role in building trust and establishing a therapeutic alliance.
At the same time, the study found a gap in perception: while both clients and therapists rated the quality of their sessions highly, they were attuned to different dynamics. Therapists' alliance ratings were linked to structural cues, such as the flow and synchrony of the interaction, which were closely tied to gaze coordination. In contrast, clients' ratings were more closely tied to emotional depth and linguistic richness. This meant that what a therapist might perceive as a productive, well-structured session, a client might experience as less personal or authentic.
By using Neon to capture and analyse simultaneous gaze, audio, and linguistic data, the research team was able to objectively identify this perceptual disconnect. This demonstrates that the gaze not only enables a connection but also carries a different meaning for each person in the interaction, revealing a critical layer of complexity in human communication.
Involuntary Connection: The Rhythm of Blinks
Figure 3: Participants engaged in eye contact under three conditions. In the direct interaction (dyad) condition, they sat face-to-face. In the mirror conditions, they sat side-by-side, directing their gaze either at their partner’s eyes (dyad-mirror) or at their own reflection (self-mirror). Source: Çakır, M., & Huckauf, A. (2024). What Eyeblinks Reveal: Interpersonal Synchronization in Dyadic Interaction. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(ETRA), 1-15.
At the other end of the spectrum lie signals that bypass deliberate control. In a study on blink synchronisation, Çakır and Huckauf (2024) from Ulm University used Neon to investigate how partners’ blinks align during sustained mutual gaze.
Pairs of participants held eye contact under three conditions: directly face-to-face, mediated through a mirror, and self-gazing in a mirror. The results showed that during direct gaze, blinks became spontaneously synchronised, achieving a temporal alignment of 51%. This physiological coupling was mirrored in participants' subjective reports, as both the blink synchrony and their reported sense of connection weakened significantly when gaze was indirect.
This research reveals blink synchrony as a physiological indicator of connection. A subtle, implicit language that operates without deliberate intention yet powerfully shapes our experience of closeness.
A Holistic View of Connection
Together, these studies illustrate a broad spectrum of social signalling through the eyes. The language of gaze is not a single dialect but a rich, multi-layered system: we see it as an active tool wielded by an infant seeking engagement, a conscious strategy used by a therapist to build alliance, and an implicit physiological rhythm that synchronises our bodies without a single thought.
What makes these insights possible is wearable eye tracking, which enables the naturalistic observation of both deliberate and involuntary behaviours. This technology provides a unified lens on human connection, revealing a profound layer of communication, from early development to professional therapy, that spoken language alone cannot capture.
Further Resources
Using Head-Mounted Eye Tracking to Examine Infant Face Looking During Naturalistic Freeplay
Full article: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z48j6zc
Research Center: Developing Intelligence Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology
Full article: https://doi.org/10.3390/jemr18040036
Research Center: Transdiagnostic Attention Intervention Lab, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California.
What Eyeblinks Reveal: Interpersonal Synchronization in Dyadic Interaction
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1145/3655614
Substack: https://mehtapcakir.substack.com/p/seeing-eye-to-eye
EU project: https://www.eyes4icu.eu/
Research Center: Department of General Psychology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
Video: Two people seated face to face, looking at each other while wearing Neon eye tracking glasses. Courtesy of Dr. Mehtap Cakir.
Human gaze is a language without words, a fundamental pillar of human connection. It signals attention, conveys emotion, and reveals intent, with behaviours ranging from deliberate looks to involuntary physiological responses that can synchronise us with others.
Studying this dynamic social language as it unfolds naturally, however, requires moving beyond the confines of desktop / lab-based eye tracking. In this digest, we explore three recent studies that exemplify this modern approach, each leveraging wearable technology like Neon eye tracking glasses to gain new insights.
By capturing the raw, unfiltered data of interaction, researchers have been able to decode gaze not just as a visual mechanism but as a fundamental social enabler. Together, these findings reveal the intricate ways we connect, showing us a side of human interaction that is often felt but rarely seen.
A New View of Infant Gaze
Figure 1: An infant and caregiver in the HOME Lab wearing Neon head-mounted eye trackers. The purple crosshair shows where the infant is looking. Face detection was applied to the scene video, allowing researchers to determine when faces were visible to the infant and when the infant actually looked at them. Source: Kaplan, B. E., Martinez, E., & Yu, C. (2025). Using Head-Mounted Eye Tracking to Examine Infant Face Looking During Naturalistic Freeplay. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47).
At one end of the spectrum, our eyes act as purposeful tools for directing attention and signalling intent. A study by Kaplan, Martinez, and Yu (2025) at the University of Texas used Neon to address this challenge. By outfitting both parents and infants with eye trackers during natural free play, researchers could observe how babies actually encounter faces. The data showed that a caregiver's face was in the infant's field of view about 23% of the time. But when a face did appear, infants were quick to look, with nearly 40% of their face looks occurring within a quarter of a second.
This finding challenges the idea of the infant as a passive observer. Instead, it frames the infant’s gaze as an active, purposeful tool for social engagement. The study's authors note that infants appear to actively orient their heads and bodies to bring a face into view when they intend to look at it. This deliberate act of looking is a key enabler of early social interaction and development.
Therapeutic Gaze: A Tale of Two Perspectives
Figure 2: Authors MR and RH wearing Neon eye tracking glasses (faces blurred for privacy). Left panels show the world camera video, while right panels display the corresponding gaze and fixations overlay, indicating where attention was focused during the session. Source: Rubin, M., Hickson, R., Suen, C., & Vaishnav, S. (2025). Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 18(4), 36.
In psychotherapy research by Rubin and colleagues (2025), graduate students, role-playing therapists, and clients wore Neon during 15-minute sessions. Analysis revealed that therapists maintained a high rate of face gazing both while listening (57%) and while speaking (56%). In everyday conversation, people typically reduce face gazing while talking. Yet therapists sustained it, signalling attentiveness and engagement. This intentional use of gaze played a central role in building trust and establishing a therapeutic alliance.
At the same time, the study found a gap in perception: while both clients and therapists rated the quality of their sessions highly, they were attuned to different dynamics. Therapists' alliance ratings were linked to structural cues, such as the flow and synchrony of the interaction, which were closely tied to gaze coordination. In contrast, clients' ratings were more closely tied to emotional depth and linguistic richness. This meant that what a therapist might perceive as a productive, well-structured session, a client might experience as less personal or authentic.
By using Neon to capture and analyse simultaneous gaze, audio, and linguistic data, the research team was able to objectively identify this perceptual disconnect. This demonstrates that the gaze not only enables a connection but also carries a different meaning for each person in the interaction, revealing a critical layer of complexity in human communication.
Involuntary Connection: The Rhythm of Blinks
Figure 3: Participants engaged in eye contact under three conditions. In the direct interaction (dyad) condition, they sat face-to-face. In the mirror conditions, they sat side-by-side, directing their gaze either at their partner’s eyes (dyad-mirror) or at their own reflection (self-mirror). Source: Çakır, M., & Huckauf, A. (2024). What Eyeblinks Reveal: Interpersonal Synchronization in Dyadic Interaction. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(ETRA), 1-15.
At the other end of the spectrum lie signals that bypass deliberate control. In a study on blink synchronisation, Çakır and Huckauf (2024) from Ulm University used Neon to investigate how partners’ blinks align during sustained mutual gaze.
Pairs of participants held eye contact under three conditions: directly face-to-face, mediated through a mirror, and self-gazing in a mirror. The results showed that during direct gaze, blinks became spontaneously synchronised, achieving a temporal alignment of 51%. This physiological coupling was mirrored in participants' subjective reports, as both the blink synchrony and their reported sense of connection weakened significantly when gaze was indirect.
This research reveals blink synchrony as a physiological indicator of connection. A subtle, implicit language that operates without deliberate intention yet powerfully shapes our experience of closeness.
A Holistic View of Connection
Together, these studies illustrate a broad spectrum of social signalling through the eyes. The language of gaze is not a single dialect but a rich, multi-layered system: we see it as an active tool wielded by an infant seeking engagement, a conscious strategy used by a therapist to build alliance, and an implicit physiological rhythm that synchronises our bodies without a single thought.
What makes these insights possible is wearable eye tracking, which enables the naturalistic observation of both deliberate and involuntary behaviours. This technology provides a unified lens on human connection, revealing a profound layer of communication, from early development to professional therapy, that spoken language alone cannot capture.
Further Resources
Using Head-Mounted Eye Tracking to Examine Infant Face Looking During Naturalistic Freeplay
Full article: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z48j6zc
Research Center: Developing Intelligence Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology
Full article: https://doi.org/10.3390/jemr18040036
Research Center: Transdiagnostic Attention Intervention Lab, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California.
What Eyeblinks Reveal: Interpersonal Synchronization in Dyadic Interaction
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1145/3655614
Substack: https://mehtapcakir.substack.com/p/seeing-eye-to-eye
EU project: https://www.eyes4icu.eu/
Research Center: Department of General Psychology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
Video: Two people seated face to face, looking at each other while wearing Neon eye tracking glasses. Courtesy of Dr. Mehtap Cakir.
Human gaze is a language without words, a fundamental pillar of human connection. It signals attention, conveys emotion, and reveals intent, with behaviours ranging from deliberate looks to involuntary physiological responses that can synchronise us with others.
Studying this dynamic social language as it unfolds naturally, however, requires moving beyond the confines of desktop / lab-based eye tracking. In this digest, we explore three recent studies that exemplify this modern approach, each leveraging wearable technology like Neon eye tracking glasses to gain new insights.
By capturing the raw, unfiltered data of interaction, researchers have been able to decode gaze not just as a visual mechanism but as a fundamental social enabler. Together, these findings reveal the intricate ways we connect, showing us a side of human interaction that is often felt but rarely seen.
A New View of Infant Gaze
Figure 1: An infant and caregiver in the HOME Lab wearing Neon head-mounted eye trackers. The purple crosshair shows where the infant is looking. Face detection was applied to the scene video, allowing researchers to determine when faces were visible to the infant and when the infant actually looked at them. Source: Kaplan, B. E., Martinez, E., & Yu, C. (2025). Using Head-Mounted Eye Tracking to Examine Infant Face Looking During Naturalistic Freeplay. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47).
At one end of the spectrum, our eyes act as purposeful tools for directing attention and signalling intent. A study by Kaplan, Martinez, and Yu (2025) at the University of Texas used Neon to address this challenge. By outfitting both parents and infants with eye trackers during natural free play, researchers could observe how babies actually encounter faces. The data showed that a caregiver's face was in the infant's field of view about 23% of the time. But when a face did appear, infants were quick to look, with nearly 40% of their face looks occurring within a quarter of a second.
This finding challenges the idea of the infant as a passive observer. Instead, it frames the infant’s gaze as an active, purposeful tool for social engagement. The study's authors note that infants appear to actively orient their heads and bodies to bring a face into view when they intend to look at it. This deliberate act of looking is a key enabler of early social interaction and development.
Therapeutic Gaze: A Tale of Two Perspectives
Figure 2: Authors MR and RH wearing Neon eye tracking glasses (faces blurred for privacy). Left panels show the world camera video, while right panels display the corresponding gaze and fixations overlay, indicating where attention was focused during the session. Source: Rubin, M., Hickson, R., Suen, C., & Vaishnav, S. (2025). Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 18(4), 36.
In psychotherapy research by Rubin and colleagues (2025), graduate students, role-playing therapists, and clients wore Neon during 15-minute sessions. Analysis revealed that therapists maintained a high rate of face gazing both while listening (57%) and while speaking (56%). In everyday conversation, people typically reduce face gazing while talking. Yet therapists sustained it, signalling attentiveness and engagement. This intentional use of gaze played a central role in building trust and establishing a therapeutic alliance.
At the same time, the study found a gap in perception: while both clients and therapists rated the quality of their sessions highly, they were attuned to different dynamics. Therapists' alliance ratings were linked to structural cues, such as the flow and synchrony of the interaction, which were closely tied to gaze coordination. In contrast, clients' ratings were more closely tied to emotional depth and linguistic richness. This meant that what a therapist might perceive as a productive, well-structured session, a client might experience as less personal or authentic.
By using Neon to capture and analyse simultaneous gaze, audio, and linguistic data, the research team was able to objectively identify this perceptual disconnect. This demonstrates that the gaze not only enables a connection but also carries a different meaning for each person in the interaction, revealing a critical layer of complexity in human communication.
Involuntary Connection: The Rhythm of Blinks
Figure 3: Participants engaged in eye contact under three conditions. In the direct interaction (dyad) condition, they sat face-to-face. In the mirror conditions, they sat side-by-side, directing their gaze either at their partner’s eyes (dyad-mirror) or at their own reflection (self-mirror). Source: Çakır, M., & Huckauf, A. (2024). What Eyeblinks Reveal: Interpersonal Synchronization in Dyadic Interaction. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(ETRA), 1-15.
At the other end of the spectrum lie signals that bypass deliberate control. In a study on blink synchronisation, Çakır and Huckauf (2024) from Ulm University used Neon to investigate how partners’ blinks align during sustained mutual gaze.
Pairs of participants held eye contact under three conditions: directly face-to-face, mediated through a mirror, and self-gazing in a mirror. The results showed that during direct gaze, blinks became spontaneously synchronised, achieving a temporal alignment of 51%. This physiological coupling was mirrored in participants' subjective reports, as both the blink synchrony and their reported sense of connection weakened significantly when gaze was indirect.
This research reveals blink synchrony as a physiological indicator of connection. A subtle, implicit language that operates without deliberate intention yet powerfully shapes our experience of closeness.
A Holistic View of Connection
Together, these studies illustrate a broad spectrum of social signalling through the eyes. The language of gaze is not a single dialect but a rich, multi-layered system: we see it as an active tool wielded by an infant seeking engagement, a conscious strategy used by a therapist to build alliance, and an implicit physiological rhythm that synchronises our bodies without a single thought.
What makes these insights possible is wearable eye tracking, which enables the naturalistic observation of both deliberate and involuntary behaviours. This technology provides a unified lens on human connection, revealing a profound layer of communication, from early development to professional therapy, that spoken language alone cannot capture.
Further Resources
Using Head-Mounted Eye Tracking to Examine Infant Face Looking During Naturalistic Freeplay
Full article: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z48j6zc
Research Center: Developing Intelligence Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology
Full article: https://doi.org/10.3390/jemr18040036
Research Center: Transdiagnostic Attention Intervention Lab, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California.
What Eyeblinks Reveal: Interpersonal Synchronization in Dyadic Interaction
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1145/3655614
Substack: https://mehtapcakir.substack.com/p/seeing-eye-to-eye
EU project: https://www.eyes4icu.eu/
Research Center: Department of General Psychology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.