Well, EVERY word I say is important to the information I am trying to convey. I don’t just talk to hear my own voice you know. And I do get tired of people INTERRUPTING…so there you go.
You ain’t alone brother. Read enough about cold reading or poker tells and I swear, you will never have a comfortable conversation again. I was freezing at my husbands doctors appointment today, all I could imagine was that I looked closed off and untrusting. 
I’d consider that explanation if they were talking to me when they close their eyes, but sometimes they’re talking to extremely attractive people.
Anecdote : back when I was in translating school, we used to do “liaison” exercises, i.e. live oral translation. One speaker makes a small speech in one language, then you have to repeat it (or at least, the gist of it) in another language for the second speaker, who then responds in his language, and so forth. Oh, and no notepad allowed. After 20 minutes, your brain turns to cheese, trust me on this
But anyway, whenever I was in the translator role, I’d close my eyes both listening to the first speaker, and saying back whatever he said too. It helped me concentrate, and allowed me to keep a kind of visual, imaginary flowchart of the dialogue. It’s hard to explain, but I’d imagine glowing icons representing the key points of what was being said, and symbols representing the rethorical links between them. In other words, I kept a mental notepad.
When the exercise was over, the students who played the speakers would always say “the translation was good… but the closed eyes thing is creepy as hell. Cut that out.”
However, I cannot imagine doing that for my own thoughts - I don’t have to try as hard a I can to keep my own thoughts in my head and not forget half of them, do I ?
WHY ON EARTH would you reply to someone (when you have no need to) stating you cannot help them because YOU have no experience to answer the question. Yet you feel compelled to tell them to to do more study???
IT’S A QUESTION on a message board, if you don’t have the answer, don’t answer!
How about you keep your advice to yourself when you can’t answer a question. You, I’d say, are a true DOPE.
[moderating]
Since you’re new to the Straight Dope, and don’t know your way around yet, I won’t issue a formal warning on this.
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We do NOT allow personal insults in the General Questions forum. Don’t do it again.
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There’s no need to re-open a thread that’s been dormant for a year and a half just to complain about something that’s already been addressed.
[/moderating]
This is an old question. Amazingly this answer was almost the exact thing I original posted. Damn zombie threads.
It has nothing to do with the OP, but I used to do a lot of telephone tech support on a piece of software. I prefer to wake up later, but sometimes the inconsiderate bastards would call at eight in the morning. I got so I could pick up the telephone receiver and answer virtually every question about the software without ever once opening my eyes - I had memorized the interface. By never opening my eyes, it was a lot easier to go back to sleep once I had them off the phone.
Addressing the consciously or unconsciously lying issue, I worked with a woman in computer technical support that did this. Whether it was a personal conversation or an exchange of technical information, she’d close her eyes a second or two into the conversation. Arching the eyebrows at certain points seemed to indicate emphasis, but her basic facial expression almost never changed. She would also use her hands as some people do in “normal” conversation.
Given that we were exchanging the tech info, which I knew to be right 95% of the time or better, I never had occasion to believe she was lying or even embellishing the truth, as she knew it.
Since she’s the only person I’ve ever known who did this throughout almost an entire conversation, I found it a quaint quirk which I (almost) never mentioned, and at times I thought it a charming affectation.
I think I asked her about it once; can’t recall her answer exactly, but it was something along the lines of either “I don’t know” or " I do not!" or both.
:pClosing
Closing the eyes shuts out the world. This can mean ‘I do not want to see what is in front of me, it is so terrible’.
Sometimes when people are talking they close their eyes. This is an equivalent to turning away so eye contact can be avoided and any implied request for the other person to speak is effectively ignored.
Visual thinkers may also close their eyes, sometimes when talking, so they can better see the internal images without external distraction
IME (in my experience) some people do this, and it usually means they’re collecting their thoughts. But it can also mean they’re shutting everything else out as they immerse themselves in, and dredge up, their own beliefs.
When their eyelids start to flutter, tho, I want to kick them in the nuts. (Man or woman.) Because it’s like they’re trying to block you out as they pontificate because they’re so smart, and you’re so stupid.
And when they’re finally finished I want to kick them in the nuts again.
Even if they’re right.
My sister does this all the time, and I think there’s one more reason for it. It keeps you from noticing social cues. You can’t tell if someone else wants to cut in if your eyes are closed, so you can just talk on and on. I do believe a lot of it is to keep her thoughts straight because, if you interrupt her, she’ll totally forget what she was saying. Anyway, just wanted to add the social and power factor into it. She says she has no idea she’s doing it. I think it’s a bad habit that people should try to break themselves of. If someone talks to me with eyes closed, I get the feeling that I’m not important at all and they’d be just as happy talking to a cow.
But I’d like it if any girl/woman were to close her eyes for a moment, then open them and bat them. Bugs Bunny had a great eye-flutter when he was in drag.
even a year later it still rings true.
I’m Buddhist and I close my eyes when meditating. It helps block out sensory input because it blocks the visual stimuli, which allows there to be less stimuli overall. So your mind can quiet a little easier, which helps with meditation training of your mind. Maybe when people do the eye closing thing before they say something it’s to clear your mind for a sec and go inward. I suspect that people that do it a lot are probably in their heads a lot of the time and they purposely block out stimuli so they can focus on all their thoughts while avoiding the world’s influence on their thoughts. In fact this is a pretty good generalization about British people in comparison iwth other cultures. I’ve known few Brits but based on the few I have known and their culture, their overall vibe is like a type One in the Enneagram personality type system. I think it’s overall the eye closing thing is not a good habit to get into because it draws away from mindfulness. But on the rare occasion and if it feels right it can be used to bring light to a situation by having some balance of mind.
Wait, I’m totally new here but I thought the list of forum questions was like brand new- Is someone reposting questions they already asked? That’s f***ing lame! I thought I was providing some insight to someone that was confused about something. If you haven’t found your answer adequately in all this time and you still want to talk about it after 2 years, you need to like get outside or something! You’re like beating a dead horse with a dead fish while masturbating.
[Moderating]
**indiashiningstar, ** you might recognize there is a certain degree of irony to your post. Please calm down. 
While we don’t particularly encourage it, people are allowed to post to old threads in General Questions to add new information. This is not “reposting” the question; it merely brings it back onto the first page.
If you find it so distressing to respond to an old thread, I suggest that the best recourse to check the date of the first post of the thread.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
OK thanks. I guess I just saw someone else’s comment about it being reopened and misunderstood. I just happened to run across this message board doing a search for something online and thought it looked interesting, not your run of the mill hashing of the media worthy news items of the day. So even though I’m not experienced with online communication i’m giving it a go and hope it’s a place where people really do help each other towards greater understanding about our world…
I talk with my eyes closed and it’s pretty much involentary. I don’t realize I’m doing it until someone mentions it. I’m actually really self concious about it to all you jerks who say its weird. It’s not that I don’t want to make eye contact and I think that I close my eyes to keep focus. I have a tendency to not be able to get my sentences out fully. It’s not so much a stutter as that I’m trying really hard not to screw up. I actually thin it’s more of a nervous reaction. My best friend said she’s never noticed me talk with my eyes closed. But when I’m trying to impress someone or not do something stupid I keep my eyes closes to focus on my words.
Having been victimized by this particularly annoying move, I think most of the answers have been brought forth: smugness, condescension, purposely tuning out the other person’s face to see that they want to reply, and a power gesture that states, ‘what I have to tell is so important, I can’t even keep my eyes open for it, it’s so deep’. *South Park *did an episode that addressed this, called ‘Smug Attack’ - the main point of which was the moral superiority complex of hybrid drivers, but also tangentially affirming the annoyance of the closed-eyes speech. Couple of times I silently stepped sideways til I was off to their flank, just to startle them when they deigned to open their eyes again.