When style matters: visual exploration is low dimensional and driven by intrinsic dynamics.
Abstract It is often assumed that we look at objects that are salient and behaviorally relevant, and that we pay attention differently depending on individual genetics, development, and experience. This view should imply high interindividual variability in eye movements. Conversely, we show that 60% of eye movements variance of more than a hundred observers looking at hundreds of different visual scenes could be summarized by a few components. The first component was not related to image-specific information and identified two kinds of observers during visual exploration: "static" and "dynamic". These viewing styles were accurately identifiable even when observers looked at a blank screen and were described by the degree of similarity to a power-law distribution of eye movements, which is thought to be a measure of intrinsic dynamics. This suggests that eye movements during visual exploration of real-world scenes are relatively independent of the visual content and may underlie intrinsic dynamics.