title: Towards the quantitative evaluation of visual attention models.
abstract: Scores of visual attention models have been developed over the past several decades of research. Differences in implementation, assumptions, and evaluations have made comparison of these models very difficult. Taxonomies have been constructed in an attempt at the organization and classification of models, but are not sufficient at quantifying which classes of models are most capable of explaining available data. At the same time, a multitude of physiological and behavioral findings have been published, measuring various aspects of human and non-human primate visual attention. All of these elements highlight the need to integrate the computational models with the data by (1) operationalizing the definitions of visual attention tasks and (2) designing benchmark datasets to measure success on specific tasks, under these definitions. In this paper, we provide some examples of operationalizing and benchmarking different visual attention tasks, along with the relevant design considerations.
authors.affiliation: Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02141, USA; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02141, USA. Electronic address: zoya@mit.edu.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Bylinskii
authors.affiliation: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02141, USA.
authors.forename: E M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: DeGennaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02141, USA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rajalingham
authors.affiliation: Computational Vision Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northeastern University, Boston 02115, USA.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ruda
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China; Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02141, USA; Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02141, USA; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto M3J 1P3, Canada.
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Tsotsos
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Benchmark datasets; Computational models; Evaluation; Model taxonomy; Opinion; Visual attention