End Albert, Gamer Matthias
Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-EppendorfHamburg, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Julius Maximilians University of WürzburgWürzburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2017 Mar 30;8:418. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00418. eCollection 2017.
According to so-called saliency-based attention models, attention during free viewing of visual scenes is particularly allocated to physically salient image regions. In the present study, we assumed that social features in complex naturalistic scenes would be processed preferentially irrespective of their physical saliency. Therefore, we expected worse prediction of gazing behavior by saliency-based attention models when social information is present in the visual field. To test this hypothesis, participants freely viewed color photographs of complex naturalistic social (e.g., including heads, bodies) and non-social (e.g., including landscapes, objects) scenes while their eye movements were recorded. In agreement with our hypothesis, we found that social features (especially heads) were heavily prioritized during visual exploration. Correspondingly, the presence of social information weakened the influence of low-level saliency on gazing behavior. Importantly, this pattern was most pronounced for the earliest fixations indicating automatic attentional processes. These findings were further corroborated by a linear mixed model approach showing that social features (especially heads) add substantially to the prediction of fixations beyond physical saliency. Taken together, the current study indicates gazing behavior for naturalistic scenes to be better predicted by the interplay of social and physically salient features than by low-level saliency alone. These findings strongly challenge the generalizability of saliency-based attention models and demonstrate the importance of considering social influences when investigating the driving factors of human visual attention.
根据所谓的基于显著性的注意力模型，在自由观看视觉场景时，注意力会特别分配到视觉上显著的图像区域。在本研究中，我们假设复杂自然场景中的社会特征会被优先处理，而不论其物理显著性如何。因此，我们预计当视野中存在社会信息时，基于显著性的注意力模型对注视行为的预测会更差。为了验证这一假设，参与者在自由观看复杂自然社会场景（例如包括头部、身体）和非社会场景（例如包括风景、物体）的彩色照片时，记录他们的眼动。与我们的假设一致，我们发现在视觉探索过程中，社会特征（尤其是头部）被高度优先处理。相应地，社会信息的存在削弱了低层次显著性对注视行为的影响。重要的是，这种模式在表明自动注意过程的最早注视中最为明显。线性混合模型方法进一步证实了这些发现，表明社会特征（尤其是头部）在预测注视方面，除了物理显著性之外，还大大增加了预测能力。综上所述，当前研究表明，自然场景的注视行为通过社会和物理显著特征的相互作用比仅通过低层次显著性能得到更好的预测。这些发现强烈挑战了基于显著性的注意力模型的普遍性，并证明了在研究人类视觉注意力的驱动因素时考虑社会影响的重要性。
