The influence of clutter on real-world scene search: Evidence from search efficiency and eye movements

John Henderson (1) , Myriam Chanceaux (2) , Tim Smith (1)

1 Visual Cognition Lab
2 AMA - Analyse de données, Modélisation et Apprentissage automatique [Grenoble]

The influence of clutter on real-world scene search: Evidence from search efficiency and eye movements John M. Henderson Psychology Department, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK [home] [e-mail] Myriam Chanceaux Laboratoire TIMC-IMAG, University of Grenoble, Grenoble, France [e-mail] Tim J. Smith Psychology Department, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK [home] [e-mail] Abstract We investigated the relationship between visual clutter and visual search in real-world scenes. Specifically, we investigated whether visual clutter, indexed by feature congestion, sub-band entropy, and edge density, correlates with search performance as assessed both by traditional behavioral measures (response time and error rate) and by eye movements. Our results demonstrate that clutter is related to search performance. These results hold for both traditional search measures and for eye movements. The results suggest that clutter may serve as an image-based proxy for search set size in real-world scenes.

Mots clés: scene perception; visual search; eye movements; clutter

Domaines: Informatique; Psychologie

John Henderson, Myriam Chanceaux, Tim Smith. The influence of clutter on real-world scene search: Evidence from search efficiency and eye movements. Journal of Vision, 2009, 9 (1), pp.32, 1-8. ⟨10.1167/9.1.32⟩. ⟨hal-00370577⟩