Objects predict fixations better than early saliency. Einhäuser, W., Spain, M., & Perona, P. J. Vision, 8(14):1-26, 2008. abstract bibtex Humans move their eyes while looking at scenes and pictures. Eye movements correlate with shifts in attention and are thought to be a consequence of optimal resource allocation for high-level tasks such as visual recognition. Models of attention, such as 'saliency maps,' are often built on the assumption that 'early' features (color, contrast, orientation, motion, and so forth) drive attention directly. We explore an alternative hypothesis: Observers attend to âinterestingâ objects. To test this hypothesis, we measure the eye position of human observers while they inspect photographs of common natural scenes. Our observers perform different tasks: artistic evaluation, analysis of content, and search. Immediately after each presentation, our observers are asked to name objects they saw. Weighted with recall frequency, these objects predict fixations in individual images better than early saliency, irrespective of task. Also, saliency combined with object positions predicts which objects are frequently named. This suggests that early saliency has only an indirect effect on attention, acting through recognized objects. Consequently, rather than treating attention as mere preprocessing step for object recognition, models of both need to be integrated.
@article{ Einhauser_etal08a,
author = {Einhäuser, W. and Spain, M. and Perona, P.},
title = {Objects predict fixations better than early saliency},
journal = {J. Vision},
year = {2008},
volume = {8},
pages = {1-26},
number = {14},
abstract = {Humans move their eyes while looking at scenes and pictures. Eye movements
correlate with shifts in attention and are thought to be a consequence
of optimal resource allocation for high-level tasks such as visual
recognition. Models of attention, such as 'saliency maps,' are often
built on the assumption that 'early' features (color, contrast, orientation,
motion, and so forth) drive attention directly. We explore an alternative
hypothesis: Observers attend to âinterestingâ objects. To test this
hypothesis, we measure the eye position of human observers while
they inspect photographs of common natural scenes. Our observers
perform different tasks: artistic evaluation, analysis of content,
and search. Immediately after each presentation, our observers are
asked to name objects they saw. Weighted with recall frequency, these
objects predict fixations in individual images better than early
saliency, irrespective of task. Also, saliency combined with object
positions predicts which objects are frequently named. This suggests
that early saliency has only an indirect effect on attention, acting
through recognized objects. Consequently, rather than treating attention
as mere preprocessing step for object recognition, models of both
need to be integrated. }
}
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