Real‐world scene perception in infants: What factors guide attention allocation?

Abstract

The foci of visual attention were modeled as a function of perceptual salience, adult fixation locations, and attentional control mechanisms (measured in separate tasks) in infants (N = 45, 3‐ to 15‐month‐olds) as they viewed static real‐world scenes. After controlling for the center bias, the results showed that low‐level perceptual salience predicts where infants look. In addition, high‐level factors also played a role: Infants fixated parts of the scenes frequently fixated by adults and this effect was stronger for older than younger infants. In line with this finding, infant fixation durations were longer on regions more frequently fixated by adults, implying longer time taken to process the available information. Fixation durations decreased with age, and this decline interacted with orienting skills such that fixation durations decreased faster with age for infants with high orienting skills, relative to infants with low orienting skills. There was a further interaction between fixation durations and selective attention abilities: Infants with low selective attention skills showed a decrease in fixation durations with age, whereas infants with higher selective attention skills showed a slight increase in fixation durations with age. These findings imply that infants' visual processing of static real‐world stimuli develops in accord with attentional control.

Eye Movements in Real-World Scene Photographs: General Characteristics and Effects of Viewing Task

“…In contrast, Mills et al (2011) did find evidence for task-dependent changes in mean fixation duration and mean saccade amplitude when participants engaged in memorization, aesthetic judgment, free-viewing, and search tasks. Mills et al (2011) also found task-dependent differences in the rate of change in fixation duration over the course of a trial (see also, Antes, 1974;Friedman and Liebelt, 1981;Unema et al, 2005;Nuthmann et al, 2010;Nuthmann, 2017), while Castelhano et al (2009) found no effect of task on ordinal fixation duration. Several major differences between these studies may have contributed to their different findings.…”

“…Cognitive psychologists use these measures to study perception (e.g., Currie et al, 2000;Gajewski and Henderson, 2005;Rayner et al, 2009;Smith et al, 2012), attention (e.g., Brockmole and Henderson, 2005a,b;Brockmole and Võ, 2010;Wolfe et al, 2011a,b;Hayes, 2017, 2018;Peacock et al, 2019) memory processes (e.g., Irwin and Zelinsky, 2002;Castelhano and Henderson, 2005;Hannula et al, 2012;Wolfe, 2012, 2013;Olejarczyk et al, 2014;Ramey et al, 2019), and language (e.g., Henderson and Ferreira, 2004;Kamide, 2007, 2009;, among other topics. Measures of eye movements in scenes are used in social psychology (Chua et al, 2005;Birmingham et al, 2008;Risko et al, 2012), clinical psychology (Fletcher-Watson et al, 2009;Hayes and Henderson, 2018;Tseng et al, 2013), and developmental psychology (Açik et al, 2010;Koski et al, 2013;Amso et al, 2014;Helo et al, 2014;van Renswoude et al, 2019). Human eye movements in scenes are also used to validate models of computer vision in engineering and computer science applications (Ehinger et al, 2009;Subramanian et al, 2011;Bylinskii et al, 2016).…”

Look up to the body: An eye-tracking investigation of 7-months-old infants’ visual exploration of emotional body expressions

“…It is possible that some of the differences that we found in infants' visual exploration behaviours between expressions may be driven by low-level visual features of the body images Frank et al, 2009;van Renswoude et al, 2019;Amso et al, 2014;Kwon et al, 2016;Itti et al, 1998;Itti & Koch, 2001). Previous studies have attempted to control for this by various stimulus manipulations, such as stimulus inversion in the picture plane.…”

Eye movements in real-world scene photographs: General characteristics and effects of viewing task

“…Cognitive psychologists use these measures to study perception (e.g., Currie, McConkie, Carlson-Radvansky, & Irwin, 2000;Gajewski & Henderson, 2005;Rayner, Smith, Malcolm, & Henderson, 2009;Smith, Lamont, & Henderson, 2012), attention (e.g., Brockmole & Henderson, 2005a, b;Brockmole & Võ, 2010;Henderson & Hayes, 2017Peacock, Hayes, & Henderson, 2019;Wolfe, Võ, Evans, & Greene, 2011;Wolfe, Alvarez, Rosenholtz, Kuzmova, & Sherman, 2011) memory processes (e.g., Castelhano & Henderson, 2005;Hannula, Baym, Warren, & Cohen, 2012;Irwin & Zelinksy, 2002;Olejarczyk, Luke, & Henderson, 2014;Ramey, Yonelinas, & Henderson, 2019;Võ & Wolfe, 2012, and language (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 2007, 2009Henderson & Ferreira, 2004;Henderson, Hayes, Rehrig, & Ferreira, 2018), among other topics. Measures of eye movements in scenes are used in social psychology (Birmingham, Bischof, & Kingstone, 2008;Chua, Boland, & Nisbett, 2005;Risko, Anderson, Lanthier, & Kingstone, 2012), clinical psychology (Fletcher-Watson, Leekam, Benson, Frank, & Findlay, 2009;Tseng, et al, 2013), and developmental psychology (Açik, Sarwary, Schultze-Kraft, Onat, & König, 2010;Amso, Haas, & Markant, 2014;Helo, Pannasch, Sirri, & Rӓmӓ, 2014;van Renswoude, Visser, Raijmakers, Tsang, & Johnson, 2019). Human eye movements in scenes are also used to validate models of computer vision in engineering and computer science applications (Bylinskii, PREPRINT: This manuscript is currently under peer review.…”