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Gaze Behavior Reveals Expectations of Potential Scene Changes

Nicolas Roth^1,2; Jasper McLaughlin¹; Klaus Obermayer^1,2,3; Martin Rolfs^1,3,4

¹ Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence, Technische Universität Berlin · ² Institute of Software Engineering and Theoretical Computer Science, Technische Universität Berlin · ³ Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Berlin, Germany · ⁴ Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Even if the scene before our eyes remains static for some time, we might explore it differently compared with how we examine static images, which are commonly used in studies on visual attention. Here we show experimentally that the top-down expectation of changes in natural scenes causes clearly distinguishable gaze behavior for visually identical scenes. We present free-viewing eye-tracking data of 20 healthy adults on a new video dataset of natural scenes, each mapped for its potential for change (PfC) in independent ratings. Observers looking at frozen videos looked significantly more often at the parts of the scene with a high PfC compared with static images, with substantially higher interobserver coherence. This viewing difference peaked right before a potential movement onset. Established concepts like object animacy or salience alone could not explain this finding. Images thus conceal experience-based expectations that affect gaze behavior in the potentially dynamic real world.

DOI

10.1177/09567976241279198

Volume

35 (12)

Pages

1350-1363

Language

en

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BibTeX

Sources

crossref