TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rösler, Lara
A1  - Rubo, Marius
A1  - Gamer, Matthias
T1  - Artificial faces predict gaze allocation in complex dynamic scenes
JF  - Frontiers in Psychology
N2  - Both low-level physical saliency and social information, as presented by human heads or bodies, are known to drive gaze behavior in free-viewing tasks. Researchers have previously made use of a great variety of face stimuli, ranging from photographs of real humans to schematic faces, frequently without systematically differentiating between the two. In the current study, we used a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) approach to investigate to what extent schematic artificial faces can predict gaze when they are presented alone or in competition with real human faces. Relative differences in predictive power became apparent, while GLMMs suggest substantial effects for real and artificial faces in all conditions. Artificial faces were accordingly less predictive than real human faces but still contributed significantly to gaze allocation. These results help to further our understanding of how social information guides gaze in complex naturalistic scenes.
KW  - social attention
KW  - faces
KW  - physical saliency
KW  - visual perception
KW  - naturalistic scenes
KW  - eye movements
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-193024
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 10
IS  - 2877
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rösler, Lara
A1  - End, Albert
A1  - Gamer, Matthias
T1  - Orienting towards social features in naturalistic scenes is reflexive
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Saliency-based models of visual attention postulate that, when a scene is freely viewed, attention is predominantly allocated to those elements that stand out in terms of their physical properties. However, eye-tracking studies have shown that saliency models fail to predict gaze behavior accurately when social information is included in an image. Notably, gaze pattern analyses revealed that depictions of human beings are heavily prioritized independent of their low-level physical saliency. What remains unknown, however, is whether the prioritization of such social features is a reflexive or a voluntary process. To investigate the early stages of social attention in more detail, participants viewed photographs of naturalistic scenes with and without social features (i.e., human heads or bodies) for 200 ms while their eye movements were being recorded. We observed significantly more first eye movements to regions containing social features than would be expected from a chance level distribution of saccades. Additionally, a generalized linear mixed model analysis revealed that the social content of a region better predicted first saccade direction than its saliency suggesting that social features partially override the impact of low-level physical saliency on gaze patterns. Given the brief image presentation time that precluded visual exploration, our results provide compelling evidence for a reflexive component in social attention. Moreover, the present study emphasizes the importance of considering social influences for a more coherent understanding of human attentional selection.
KW  - social features
KW  - visual attention
KW  - gaze patterns
KW  - reflexive component
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-170586
VL  - 12
IS  - 7
ER  -