Comparison of human and monkey eye-movement behavior under free viewing conditions N Wilming1, M L Jutras2, P König1, E A Buffalo2 |
|---|
1Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany |
| Macaque monkeys are the preferred model for investigation of visual attention, visual memory, and the oculomotor system. Yet, few experiments allow a direct comparison between monkeys and humans, and it is not known how well results generalize between species. Accordingly, we compared the viewing behavior of four macaque monkeys with that of 83 human observers freely viewing natural scenes, urban scenes and fractals. Image features showed virtually identical patterns of feature fixation correlations in both species (r^2=0.91), suggesting a similarity of stimulus-dependent attention mechanisms. Furthermore, human fixation locations, but not those of monkeys, were well predicted by locations marked as “interesting” by 35 independent observers (% of inter observer agreement: humans 94%, monkeys 67%). Conversely, a bottom-up salience model predicted fixation locations of monkeys better than those of humans (humans 64%, monkeys 76%). These findings show that bottom-up and higher level factors have a different influence on the guidance of viewing behavior in each species. We also observed that human viewing behavior predicted monkey behavior better than monkeys predicted human behavior. These findings suggest that monkeys and humans share stimulus-dependent attention mechanisms but that human viewing behavior is more strongly guided by stimulus-independent factors. |
| Up Home |
|---|