Cognitive determinants of fixation location during picture viewing

Abstract

This experiment involved the question of where human observers look in a picture. The results indicated that observers fixate earlier, more often, and with longer durations on objects that have a low probability of appearing in a scene (e.g., an octopus in a farm scene) than on objects that have a high probability of appearing (e.g., a tractor in a farm scene). These findings (a) imply a role of cognitive factors in peripheral visual processing and (b) suggest a possible relationship between the nature of information initially acquired from a picture and subsequent recognition memory for that picture.