Statistical modeling of the influence of a visual distractor on the following eye-fixations

Hélène Queste (1) , Nathalie Guyader (1) , Anne Guérin-Dugué (1)

1 GIPSA-VIBS - GIPSA - Vision and Brain Signal Processing

We examined the influence of a visual distractor appearing during a fixation on the following fixations during natural exploration. It is known that new objects, congruent or incongruent with the scene, appearing during a fixation are fixated more than chance [Brockmole, J. R., & Henderson, J. M. (2008). Prioritizing new objects for eye fixation in real-world scenes: Effects of object-scene consistency. Vis. Cog., 16(2-3), 375-390]. In this study, we replicated this result using a Gabor patch for the appearing object, called a distractor because it was artificial and non-related to scenes. Besides, we wanted to quantify its influence on the exploration. A statistical model of the fixation density function was designed to analyze how the exploration was disrupted from and after the onset of the distractor. The model was composed of a linear weighted combination of different maps modeling three independent factors influencing gaze positions. We wondered whether fixation locations observed were rather due to the distractor or the saliency of the scenes. As expected, at the beginning of the exploration, fixation locations were not randomly chosen but influenced by the saliency of the scene and the distractor. The distractor onset strongly influenced fixations and this influence decreased with time.

Domaines: Statistiques [math.ST]; Théorie [stat.TH]; Modélisation et simulation; Psychologie

Hélène Queste, Nathalie Guyader, Anne Guérin-Dugué. Statistical modeling of the influence of a visual distractor on the following eye-fixations. ECEM 2013 - 17th European Conference on Eye Movements, Aug 2013, Lund, Sweden. pp.n/c. ⟨hal-00864111⟩