Individual differences in visual salience vary along semantic dimensions

What determines where we look? Theories of attentional guidance hold that image features and task demands govern fixation behaviour, while differences between observers are ‘noise’. Here, we investigated the fixations of > 100 human adults freely viewing a large set of complex scenes. We found systematic individual differences in fixation frequencies along six semantic stimulus dimensions. These differences were large (> twofold) and highly stable across images and time. Surprisingly, they also held for first fixations directed towards each image, commonly interpreted as ‘bottom-up’ visual salience. Their perceptual relevance was documented by a correlation between individual face salience and recognition skills. The dimensions of individual salience and their covariance pattern replicated across samples from three different countries, suggesting they reflect fundamental biological mechanisms of attention. Our findings show stable individual salience differences along semantic dimensions, with meaningful perceptual implications. Salience reflects features of the observer as well as the image.

Download Full-text

Individual differences in visual salience vary along semantic dimensions

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1820553116 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 201820553 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Benjamin de Haas ◽

Alexios L. Iakovidis ◽

D. Samuel Schwarzkopf ◽

Karl R. Gegenfurtner

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Twin Studies ◽

Image Features ◽

Task Demands ◽

Large Set ◽

Visual Salience ◽

Gaze Behavior ◽

Attentional Guidance ◽

Complex Scenes ◽

Human Adults

What determines where we look? Theories of attentional guidance hold that image features and task demands govern fixation behavior, while differences between observers are interpreted as a “noise-ceiling” that strictly limits predictability of fixations. However, recent twin studies suggest a genetic basis of gaze-trace similarity for a given stimulus. This leads to the question of how individuals differ in their gaze behavior and what may explain these differences. Here, we investigated the fixations of >100 human adults freely viewing a large set of complex scenes containing thousands of semantically annotated objects. We found systematic individual differences in fixation frequencies along six semantic stimulus dimensions. These differences were large (>twofold) and highly stable across images and time. Surprisingly, they also held for first fixations directed toward each image, commonly interpreted as “bottom-up” visual salience. Their perceptual relevance was documented by a correlation between individual face salience and face recognition skills. The set of reliable individual salience dimensions and their covariance pattern replicated across samples from three different countries, suggesting they reflect fundamental biological mechanisms of attention. Our findings show stable individual differences in salience along a set of fundamental semantic dimensions and that these differences have meaningful perceptual implications. Visual salience reflects features of the observer as well as the image.

Download Full-text

Quantifying the Effects of Multi-Tasking on Processing Efficiency

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting ◽

10.1177/1541931218621389 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 62 (1) ◽

pp. 1717-1721

Author(s):

Elizabeth L. Fox ◽

Joseph W. Houpt

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

System Design ◽

Task Demands ◽

Task Characteristics ◽

Baseline Model ◽

Processing Efficiency ◽

Different Types ◽

Unique Individual ◽

And Task ◽

Task Environments

The type and amount of task demands that humans must simultaneously process and respond to influences how efficient they are in completing the tasks. Capturing how and to what degree human efficiency changes in different task environments is crucial to inform an appropriate system design. An individual-based analytic approach is necessary to accurately capture performance changes and lend practical suggestions. We can provide designers with the amount and type of task demands that we expect a person to sustain adequate performance given their unique underlying cognitive properties. We develop a metric, multi-tasking throughput (MT), that provides the extent to which a person processes tasks more efficiently, the same, or less efficiently when required to complete several different types of tasks at once. This is a cognitive-based, standardized metric; meaning it yields the relative degree of change from a baseline model that is created to accommodate to unique individual differences, numbers of tasks, and task characteristics. We quantify MT by using transformations of RTs to predict the extent that external demands of multi-tasking exceeds what the cognitive system can accommodate to thereby hindering performance. We use a real world dual-task application to highlight the apparent differences in strategy and ability across individuals and alternative task environments.

Download Full-text

McGurk doesn’t work: Individual differences and task demands explain the McGurk illusion

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America ◽

10.1121/1.5137706 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 146 (4) ◽

pp. 3083-3083

Author(s):

Laura M. Getz ◽

Joseph C. Toscano

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Task Demands ◽

Mcgurk Illusion ◽

And Task

Download Full-text

How Does the Purpose of Inspection Influence the Potency of Visual Salience in Scene Perception?

Perception ◽

10.1068/p5659 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 36 (8) ◽

pp. 1123-1138 ◽

Cited By ~ 64

Author(s):

Tom Foulsham ◽

Geoffrey Underwood

Keyword(s):

Scene Perception ◽

Task Demands ◽

Memory Encoding ◽

Visual Salience ◽

Top Down ◽

Cognitive Demands ◽

Search Tasks ◽

Eye Fixations ◽

Complex Scenes ◽

Salience Map

Salience-map models have been taken to suggest that the locations of eye fixations are determined by the extent of the low-level discontinuities in an image. While such models have found some support, an increasing emphasis on the task viewers are performing implies that these models must combine with cognitive demands to describe how the eyes are guided efficiently. An experiment is reported in which eye movements to objects in photographs were examined while viewers performed a memory-encoding task or one of two search tasks. The objects depicted in the scenes had known salience ranks according to a popular model. Participants fixated higher-salience objects sooner and more often than lower-salience objects, but only when memorising scenes. This difference shows that salience-map models provide useful predictions even in complex scenes and late in viewing. However, salience had no effects when searching for a target defined by category or exemplar. The results suggest that salience maps are not used to guide the eyes in these tasks, that cognitive override by task demands can be total, and that modelling top – down search is important but may not be easily accomplished within a salience-map framework.

Download Full-text

Extraversion and Dopamine

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.3.1.37 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 37-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Thomas H. Rammsayer

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

D2 Receptor ◽

D2 Receptors ◽

Behavioral Differences ◽

Biological Mechanisms ◽

Brain Dopamine ◽

Personality Dimension ◽

Time Performance ◽

Reaction Time Performance ◽

Induced Changes

Recent research suggests that individual differences in brain dopamine (DA) functioning may be related to the personality dimension of extraversion. The present study was designed to further elucidate the biological mechanisms underlying behavioral differences between extraverts and introverts. For this purpose, the differential effects of a pharmacologically induced blockade of mesolimbocortical DA D2 receptors on reaction-time performance were investigated in 24 introverted and 24 extraverted subjects. Introverts were found to be much more susceptible to pharmacologically induced changes in D2 receptor activity than extraverts. This finding provides additional experimental evidence for the notion that individual differences in D2 receptor responsivity may represent a neurobiological substratum for the personality dimension of extraversion.

Download Full-text

Individual Differences in Mental Rotation

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000184 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 60 (3) ◽

pp. 164-171 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Peter Khooshabeh ◽

Mary Hegarty ◽

Thomas F. Shipley

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Mental Rotation ◽

Response Times ◽

Task Demands ◽

Mental Rotation Task ◽

Imagery Ability ◽

Alternative Strategies

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that imagery ability and figural complexity interact to affect the choice of mental rotation strategies. Participants performed the Shepard and Metzler (1971) mental rotation task. On half of the trials, the 3-D figures were manipulated to create “fragmented” figures, with some cubes missing. Good imagers were less accurate and had longer response times on fragmented figures than on complete figures. Poor imagers performed similarly on fragmented and complete figures. These results suggest that good imagers use holistic mental rotation strategies by default, but switch to alternative strategies depending on task demands, whereas poor imagers are less flexible and use piecemeal strategies regardless of the task demands.

Download Full-text