{"title":"Quantifying task-related gaze","authors":"Kerri Walter, Michelle Freeman, Peter Bex","doi":"10.3758/s13414-024-02883-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Competing theories attempt to explain what guides eye movements when exploring natural scenes: bottom-up image salience and top-down semantic salience. In one study, we apply language-based analyses to quantify the well-known observation that task influences gaze in natural scenes. Subjects viewed ten scenes as if they were performing one of two tasks. We found that the semantic similarity between the task and the labels of objects in the scenes captured the task-dependence of gaze (t(39) = 13.083; p < 0.001). In another study, we examined whether image salience or semantic salience better predicts gaze during a search task, and if viewing strategies are affected by searching for targets of high or low semantic relevance to the scene. Subjects searched 100 scenes for a high- or low-relevance object. We found that image salience becomes a worse predictor of gaze across successive fixations, while semantic salience remains a consistent predictor (X<sup>2</sup>(1, N=40) = 75.148, p < .001). Furthermore, we found that semantic salience decreased as object relevance decreased (t(39) = 2.304; p = .027). These results suggest that semantic salience is a useful predictor of gaze during task-related scene viewing, and that even in target-absent trials, gaze is modulated by the relevance of a search target to the scene in which it might be located.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13414-024-02883-w.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-024-02883-w","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Competing theories attempt to explain what guides eye movements when exploring natural scenes: bottom-up image salience and top-down semantic salience. In one study, we apply language-based analyses to quantify the well-known observation that task influences gaze in natural scenes. Subjects viewed ten scenes as if they were performing one of two tasks. We found that the semantic similarity between the task and the labels of objects in the scenes captured the task-dependence of gaze (t(39) = 13.083; p < 0.001). In another study, we examined whether image salience or semantic salience better predicts gaze during a search task, and if viewing strategies are affected by searching for targets of high or low semantic relevance to the scene. Subjects searched 100 scenes for a high- or low-relevance object. We found that image salience becomes a worse predictor of gaze across successive fixations, while semantic salience remains a consistent predictor (X2(1, N=40) = 75.148, p < .001). Furthermore, we found that semantic salience decreased as object relevance decreased (t(39) = 2.304; p = .027). These results suggest that semantic salience is a useful predictor of gaze during task-related scene viewing, and that even in target-absent trials, gaze is modulated by the relevance of a search target to the scene in which it might be located.
期刊介绍:
The journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics is an official journal of the Psychonomic Society. It spans all areas of research in sensory processes, perception, attention, and psychophysics. Most articles published are reports of experimental work; the journal also presents theoretical, integrative, and evaluative reviews. Commentary on issues of importance to researchers appears in a special section of the journal. Founded in 1966 as Perception & Psychophysics, the journal assumed its present name in 2009.