title: The art of gaze guidance.
abstract: An ongoing challenge in scene perception is identifying the factors that influence how we explore our visual world. By using multiple versions of paintings as a tool to control for high-level influences, we show that variation in the visual details of a painting causes differences in observers' gaze despite constant task and content. Further, we show that by switching locations of highly salient regions through textural manipulation, a corresponding switch in eye movement patterns is observed. Our results present the finding that salient regions and gaze behavior are not simply correlated; variation in saliency through textural differences causes an observer to direct their viewing accordingly. This work demonstrates the direct contribution of low-level factors in visual exploration by showing that examination of a scene, even for aesthetic purposes, can be easily manipulated by altering the low-level properties and hence, the saliency of the scene.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University.
authors.forename: Nida
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Latif
authors.affiliation: Department of World Cultures: Canadian Art, Royal Ontario Museum.
authors.forename: Arlene
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gehmacher
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University.
authors.forename: Monica S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Castelhano
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University.
authors.forename: Kevin G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Munhall
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements / Q000295:instrumentation; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010151:Paintings / Q000523:psychology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult