Visual Attention, Visual Saliency, and Eye Movements During the Inspection of Natural Scenes

How does visual saliency determine the attention given to objects in a scene? Viewers’ eye movements were recorded during the inspection of pictures of natural office scenes containing two objects of interest. According to the Itti and Koch algorithm one object had lower visual saliency relative to the other that was visually complex. We varied the purpose of picture inspection to determine whether visual saliency is invariably dominant in determining the pattern of fixations, or whether task demands can provide a cognitive override that renders saliency as of secondary importance. When viewers inspected the scene in preparation for a memory task, the more complex objects were potent in attracting early fixations, in support of a saliency map model of scene inspec-tion. When the viewers were set the task of search for the lower-saliency target the effect of the distractor was negligible, requiring the saliency map to be built with cognitive influences.