Flechsenhar Aleya Felicia, Gamer Matthias
Department of Psychology, Julius Maximilian University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2017 Aug 24;12(8):e0183799. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183799. eCollection 2017.
Visual saliency maps reflecting locations that stand out from the background in terms of their low-level physical features have proven to be very useful for empirical research on attentional exploration and reliably predict gaze behavior. In the present study we tested these predictions for socially relevant stimuli occurring in naturalistic scenes using eye tracking. We hypothesized that social features (i.e. human faces or bodies) would be processed preferentially over non-social features (i.e. objects, animals) regardless of their low-level saliency. To challenge this notion, we included three tasks that deliberately addressed non-social attributes. In agreement with our hypothesis, social information, especially heads, was preferentially attended compared to highly salient image regions across all tasks. Social information was never required to solve a task but was regarded nevertheless. More so, after completing the task requirements, viewing behavior reverted back to that of free-viewing with heavy prioritization of social features. Additionally, initial eye movements reflecting potentially automatic shifts of attention, were predominantly directed towards heads irrespective of top-down task demands. On these grounds, we suggest that social stimuli may provide exclusive access to the priority map, enabling social attention to override reflexive and controlled attentional processes. Furthermore, our results challenge the generalizability of saliency-based attention models.
视觉显著性图反映了在低层次物理特征方面从背景中脱颖而出的位置，已被证明对注意力探索的实证研究非常有用，并能可靠地预测注视行为。在本研究中，我们使用眼动追踪测试了这些预测对于自然场景中出现的社会相关刺激的情况。我们假设，无论其低层次显著性如何，社会特征（即人脸或身体）会比非社会特征（即物体、动物）得到优先处理。为了挑战这一观点，我们纳入了三个特意涉及非社会属性的任务。与我们的假设一致，在所有任务中，与高度显著的图像区域相比，社会信息，尤其是头部，得到了优先关注。解决任务从未需要社会信息，但它仍然受到关注。更重要的是，在完成任务要求后，观看行为恢复到自由观看状态，对社会特征有高度的优先选择。此外，反映潜在自动注意力转移的初始眼动主要指向头部，而与自上而下的任务需求无关。基于这些理由，我们认为社会刺激可能提供了对优先级地图的专属访问，使社会注意力能够超越反射性和控制性注意力过程。此外，我们的结果挑战了基于显著性的注意力模型的普遍性。
