Gaze Behavior Reveals Expectations of Potential Scene Changes
实验发现,当人们观看冻结的视频(看似静态)时,会更多注视场景中可能发生变化的区域,这种注视模式与观看静态图片显著不同,且无法用物体生命性或显著性等传统概念解释。
Even if the scene before our eyes remains static for some time, we might explore it differently compared with how we examine static images, which are commonly used in studies on visual attention. Here we show experimentally that the top-down expectation of changes in natural scenes causes clearly distinguishable gaze behavior for visually identical scenes. We present free-viewing eye-tracking data of 20 healthy adults on a new video dataset of natural scenes, each mapped for its potential for change (PfC) in independent ratings. Observers looking at frozen videos looked significantly more often at the parts of the scene with a high PfC compared with static images, with substantially higher interobserver coherence. This viewing difference peaked right before a potential movement onset. Established concepts like object animacy or salience alone could not explain this finding. Images thus conceal experience-based expectations that affect gaze behavior in the potentially dynamic real world.