Perceptual saliency of points along the contour of everyday objects: a large-scale study

The aim of this large-scale study was to find out which points along the contour of a shape are most salient and why. Many subjects (N=161) were asked to mark salient points on contour stimuli, derived from a large set of line drawings of everyday objects (N=260). The database of more than 200,000 marked points was analyzed extensively to test the hypothesis, first formulated by Attneave (1954), that curvature extrema are most salient. This hypothesis was confirmed by the data: Highly salient points are usually very close to strong curvature extrema (positive maxima and negative minima). However, perceptual saliency of points along the contour is determined by more factors than just local absolute curvature. This was confirmed by an extensive correlational analysis of perceptual saliency in relation to ten different stimulus factors. A point is more salient when the two line segments connecting it with its two neighboring salient points make a sharp turning angle and when the 2-D part defined by the triplet of salient points is less compact and sticks out more.