Young people judge age by looking at eyes, according to study

Boston-According to a study published in the February issue of Ophthalmology younger people seem to make judgments about the age and alertness of older people by looking into and around their eyes.

In the study, 47 young adults looked at the faces of older people on a computer monitor equipped with a camera that looked back at them with an eye-tracking device that analyzed the direction and duration of the participants’ gazes.

The younger participants most often looked at the eye region, followed by the forehead and the nose region, according to Huy Tu Nguyen, MD, Department of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

The researchers concluded that the results "demonstrate that the eye region is most important in making fatigue and age judgments [raising] the possibility that aesthetic surgery to the eye region may be an efficient, effective intervention to enhance an individual's attractiveness by possibly reducing how old or tired one appears."