Spatial statistics for gaze patterns in scene viewing: Effects of repeated viewing

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Computational neuroscience
• Visual attention research

Background:

• Scene viewing involves complex attentional selection.
• Eye movements during scene viewing exhibit non-uniform fixation distributions.
• Some image regions attract frequent fixations, while others are ignored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the spatial relationships between eye movement fixations during scene viewing.
• To quantify dependencies between fixation locations along individual scanpaths.
• To explore how repeated image inspection affects fixation patterns.

Main Methods:

• Application of spatial point process methods.
• Utilizing the pair correlation function to analyze fixation location dependencies.
• Simulations of a dynamical model to interpret results.

Main Results:

• Fixation locations demonstrate significant aggregation within a 4° spatial range, exceeding chance levels.
• The pair correlation function revealed increased fixation aggregation upon repeated image presentation.
• Simulations indicated that a reduced spatial attentional span could account for the observed differences between first and second viewings.

Conclusions:

• Fixation patterns during scene viewing are not random and exhibit spatial clustering.
• Repeated exposure to a scene enhances fixation aggregation, possibly due to a more focused attentional span.
• Spatial point process analysis provides a robust method for understanding eye movement dynamics in scene perception.