Recognition and attention guidance during contextual cueing in real-world scenes: evidence from eye movements

When confronted with a previously encountered scene, what information is used to guide search to a known target? We contrasted the role of a scene's basic-level category membership with its specific arrangement of visual properties. Observers were repeatedly shown photographs of scenes that contained consistently but arbitrarily located targets, allowing target positions to be associated with scene content. Learned scenes were then unexpectedly mirror reversed, spatially translating visual features as well as the target across the display while preserving the scene's identity and concept. Mirror reversals produced a cost as the eyes initially moved toward the position in the display in which the target had previously appeared. The cost was not complete, however; when initial search failed, the eyes were quickly directed to the target's new position. These results suggest that in real-world scenes, shifts of attention are initially based on scene identity, and subsequent shifts are guided by more detailed information regarding scene and object layout.