Abstract
How does visual saliency determine the attention given to objects in a scene? Viewers’ eye movements were recorded during the inspection of pictures of natural office scenes containing two objects of interest. According to the Itti and Koch algorithm one object had lower visual saliency relative to the other that was visually complex. We varied the purpose of picture inspection to determine whether visual saliency is invariably dominant in determining the pattern of fixations, or whether task demands can provide a cognitive override that renders saliency as of secondary importance. When viewers inspected the scene in preparation for a memory task, the more complex objects were potent in attracting early fixations, in support of a saliency map model of scene inspec-tion. When the viewers were set the task of search for the lower-saliency target the effect of the distractor was negligible, requiring the saliency map to be built with cognitive influences.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Itti, L., Koch, C.: A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention. Vis. Res. 40, 1489–1506 (2000)
Parkhurst, D., Law, K., Niebur, E.: Modeling the role of salience in the allocation of overt visual attention. Vis. Res. 42, 107–123 (2002)
Nothdurft, H.-C.: Attention shifts to salient targets. Vis. Res. 42, 1287–1306 (2002)
Underwood, G., Jebbett, L., Roberts, K.: Inspecting pictures for information to verify a sentence: Eye movements in general encoding and in focused search. Quart. J. Exp. Psychol. 57A, 165–182 (2004)
Ludwig, C.J.H., Gilchrist, I.D.: Stimulus-driven and goal-driven control over visual selection. J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Perc. Perf. 28, 902–912 (2002)
Lamy, D., Leber, A., Egeth, H.E.: Effects of task relevance and stimulus-driven salience in feature-search mode. J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Perc. Perf. 30, 1019–1031 (2004)
Wolfe, J.M., Horowitz, T.S., Kenner, N., Hyle, M., Vasan, N.: How fast can you change your mind? The speed of top-down guidance in visual search. Vis. Res. 44, 1411–1426 (2004)
Henderson, J.M., Weeks, P.A., Hollingworth, A.: The effects of semantic consistency on eye movements during complex scene viewing. J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Perc. Perf. 25, 210–228 (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Underwood, G., Foulsham, T., van Loon, E., Underwood, J. (2005). Visual Attention, Visual Saliency, and Eye Movements During the Inspection of Natural Scenes. In: Mira, J., Álvarez, J.R. (eds) Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering Applications: A Bioinspired Approach. IWINAC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3562. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11499305_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11499305_47
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26319-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31673-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)