Salience in Paintings: Bottom-Up Influences on Eye Fixations

Abstract

In the current study, we investigated whether visual salience attracts attention in a bottom-up manner. We presented abstract and depictive paintings as well as photographs to naive participants in free-viewing (Experiment 1) and target-search (Experiment 2) tasks. Image salience was computed in terms of local feature contrasts in color, luminance, and orientation. Based on the theories of stimulus-driven salience effects on attention and fixations, we expected salience effects in all conditions and a characteristic short-lived temporal profile of the salience-driven effect on fixations. Our results confirmed the predictions. Results are discussed in terms of their potential implications.