Koevoet Damian, Strauch Christoph, Naber Marnix, Van der Stigchel Stefan
Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 May 15. doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02701-w.
Choosing where to move the eyes ('saccade selection') is one of the most frequent human decisions and fundamentally shapes perception. Currently, saccade selection is thought to be predominantly driven by the observer's goals, selection history, and by the physical salience of stimuli. Recent work demonstrates that the inherent effort associated with planning and executing saccades ('saccade costs') also drives saccade selection: participants prefer making affordable over costly saccades. Do saccade costs still affect saccade selection when other factors such as salience attract gaze? Here, we addressed if, and how, saccade costs and salience together drive saccade selection by having participants freely choose between two potential saccade targets in different directions. Saccade targets either differed in salience or not, allowing us to disentangle the effects of saccade costs and salience. We observed that salience predicted saccade selection: participants chose salient over non-salient targets. Furthermore, saccade costs predicted saccade selection when equally salient targets were presented. When the possible targets differed in salience, the effect of saccade costs on saccade selection was reduced but not eliminated. Further analyses demonstrate that saccade costs and salience jointly drive saccade selection. Together, our results are in line with an accumulating body of work, and show that the role of effort in saccade selection is robust to salience. We conclude that effort must be considered a fundamental factor that drives where the eyes are moved.
选择眼睛注视的位置（“扫视选择”）是人类最常见的决策之一，并且从根本上塑造了感知。目前，扫视选择被认为主要由观察者的目标、选择历史以及刺激的物理显著性驱动。最近的研究表明，与计划和执行扫视相关的内在努力（“扫视成本”）也会驱动扫视选择：参与者更倾向于进行成本较低而非较高的扫视。当诸如显著性等其他因素吸引目光时，扫视成本是否仍会影响扫视选择呢？在这里，我们通过让参与者在不同方向的两个潜在扫视目标之间自由选择，来探究扫视成本和显著性如何共同驱动扫视选择。扫视目标的显著性可能不同，也可能相同，这使我们能够区分扫视成本和显著性的影响。我们观察到，显著性能够预测扫视选择：参与者会选择显著目标而非不显著目标。此外，当呈现同等显著的目标时，扫视成本也能预测扫视选择。当可能的目标在显著性上存在差异时，扫视成本对扫视选择的影响会减弱，但并未消除。进一步的分析表明，扫视成本和显著性共同驱动扫视选择。总体而言，我们的结果与越来越多的研究成果一致，表明努力在扫视选择中的作用不受显著性影响。我们得出结论，必须将努力视为驱动眼睛注视位置的一个基本因素。
