Optimal and preferred eye landing positions in objects and scenes

Abstract

Viewing position effects are commonly observed in reading, but they have only rarely been investigated in object perception or in the realistic context of a natural scene. In two experiments, we explored where people fixate within photorealistic objects and the effects of this landing position on recognition and subsequent eye movements. The results demonstrate an optimal viewing position—objects are processed more quickly when fixation is in the centre of the object. Viewers also prefer to saccade to the centre of objects within a natural scene, even when making a large saccade. A central landing position is associated with an increased likelihood of making a refixation, a result that differs from previous reports and suggests that multiple fixations within objects, within scenes, occur for a range of reasons. These results suggest that eye movements within scenes are systematic and are made with reference to an early parsing of the scene into constituent objects.

Keywords:

• Scene perception
• Eye movements
• Attention
• Object recognition

Acknowledgments

We thank Antje Nuthmann and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript.