Meaning Guides Attention in Real-World Scene Images: Evidence from Eye Movements and Meaning Maps

Abstract

We compared the influences of meaning and salience on attentional guidance in scene images. Meaning was captured by \"meaning maps\" representing the spatial distribution of semantic information in scenes. Meaning maps were coded in a format that could be directly compared to maps of image salience generated from image features. We investigated the degree to which meaning versus image salience predicted human viewers spatial distribution of attention over scenes, with attention operationalized as duration-weighted fixation density. The results showed that both meaning and salience predicted the distribution of attention, but that when the correlation between meaning and salience was statistically controlled, meaning accounted for unique variance in attention but salience did not. This pattern was observed for early as well as late fixations, for fixations following short as well as long saccades, and for fixations including or excluding the centers of the scenes. The results strongly suggest that meaning guides attention in real world scenes. We discuss the results from the perspective of a cognitive relevance theory of attentional guidance in scenes.