Saliency and scan patterns in the inspection of real-world scenes: Eye movements during encoding and recognition

How do sequences of eye fixations match each other when viewing a picture during encoding and again during a recognition test, and to what extent are fixation sequences (scan patterns) determined by the low-level visual features of the picture rather than the domain knowledge of the viewer? The saliency map model of visual attention was tested in two experiments to ask whether the rank ordering of regions by their saliency values can be used to predict the sequence of fixations made when first looking at an image. Experiment 1 established that the sequence of fixations on first inspection during encoding was similar to that made when looking at the picture the second time, in the recognition test. Experiment 2 confirmed this similarity of fixation sequences at encoding and recognition, and also found a similarity between scan patterns made during the initial recognition test and during a second recognition test 1 week later. The fixation scan patterns were not similar to those predicted by the saliency map model in either experiment, however. These conclusions are qualified by interactions involving the match between the content of the image and the domain of interest of the viewers.