Foulsham Tom, Kingstone Alan
Department of Psychology, University of Essex.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2017 Jun;71(2):172-181. doi: 10.1037/cep0000125.
Research investigating scene perception normally involves laboratory experiments using static images. Much has been learned about how observers look at pictures of the real world and the attentional mechanisms underlying this behaviour. However, the use of static, isolated pictures as a proxy for studying everyday attention in real environments has led to the criticism that such experiments are artificial. We report a new study that tests the extent to which the real world can be reduced to simpler laboratory stimuli. We recorded the gaze of participants walking on a university campus with a mobile eye tracker, and then showed static frames from this walk to new participants, in either a random or sequential order. The aim was to compare the gaze of participants walking in the real environment with fixations on pictures of the same scene. The data show that picture order affects interobserver fixation consistency and changes looking patterns. Critically, while fixations on the static images overlapped significantly with the actual real-world eye movements, they did so no more than a model that assumed a general bias to the centre. Remarkably, a model that simply takes into account where the eyes are normally positioned in the head-independent of what is actually in the scene-does far better than any other model. These data reveal that viewing patterns to static scenes are a relatively poor proxy for predicting real world eye movement behaviour, while raising intriguing possibilities for how to best measure attention in everyday life. (PsycINFO Database Record
研究场景感知的研究通常涉及使用静态图像的实验室实验。关于观察者如何观看现实世界的图片以及这种行为背后的注意力机制，我们已经了解了很多。然而，使用静态、孤立的图片作为研究现实环境中日常注意力的替代方法，引发了这样的批评，即此类实验是人为的。我们报告了一项新研究，该研究测试了现实世界可以简化为更简单的实验室刺激的程度。我们使用移动眼动仪记录了在大学校园里行走的参与者的注视情况，然后将这次行走中的静态画面以随机或顺序的方式展示给新的参与者。目的是将在现实环境中行走的参与者的注视情况与对同一场景图片的注视情况进行比较。数据表明，图片顺序会影响观察者之间注视的一致性，并改变注视模式。至关重要的是，虽然对静态图像的注视与实际的现实世界眼动有显著重叠，但它们与一个假设向中心有一般偏向的模型相比，重叠程度并不更高。值得注意的是，一个简单考虑眼睛在头部通常位置（与场景中实际存在的事物无关）的模型比任何其他模型都要好得多。这些数据表明，对静态场景的观看模式在预测现实世界眼动行为方面是一个相对较差的替代方法，同时也为如何在日常生活中最佳测量注意力提出了有趣的可能性。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》
