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Abstract
“Natural” gaze is typically measured by tracking eye positions during scene presentation in laboratory settings. How informative are such investigations for real-world conditions? Using a mobile eyetracking setup (“EyeSeeCam”), we measure gaze during free exploration of various in- and outdoor environments, while simultaneously recording head-centred videos. Here, we replay these videos in a laboratory setup. Half of the laboratory observers view the movies continuously, half as sequences of static 1-second frames. We find a bias of eye position to the stimulus centre, which is strongest in the 1 s frame replay condition. As a consequence, interobserver consistency is highest in this condition, though not fully explained by spatial bias alone. This leaves room for image specific bottom-up models to predict gaze beyond generic biases. Indeed, the “saliency map” predicts eye position in all conditions, and best for continuous replay. Continuous replay predicts real-world gaze better than 1 s frame replay does. In conclusion, experiments and models benefit from preserving the spatial statistics and temporal continuity of natural stimuli to improve their validity for real-world gaze behaviour.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the following grants and institutions: BMtH was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Training Group 885-Neuroact; JV received support by the Bayerische Forschungsstiftung (DOK-88-07); PK by the EU project IST-027268-POP “Perception On Purpose”. This work was conducted in part within the DFG excellence initiative research cluster Cognition for Technical Systems (CoTeSys).