Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults
Abstract Adult gaze behaviour towards naturalistic scenes is highly biased towards semantic object classes. Little is known about the ontological development of these biases, nor about group-level differences in gaze behaviour between adults and preschoolers. Here, we let preschoolers (n = 34, age 5...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2023-07-01
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| Series: | Scientific Reports |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-38854-8 |
| _version_ | 1797774225102077952 |
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| author | Marcel Linka Özlem Sensoy Harun Karimpur Gudrun Schwarzer Benjamin de Haas |
| author_facet | Marcel Linka Özlem Sensoy Harun Karimpur Gudrun Schwarzer Benjamin de Haas |
| author_sort | Marcel Linka |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Adult gaze behaviour towards naturalistic scenes is highly biased towards semantic object classes. Little is known about the ontological development of these biases, nor about group-level differences in gaze behaviour between adults and preschoolers. Here, we let preschoolers (n = 34, age 5 years) and adults (n = 42, age 18–59 years) freely view 40 complex scenes containing objects with different semantic attributes to compare their fixation behaviour. Results show that preschool children allocate a significantly smaller proportion of dwell time and first fixations on Text and instead fixate Faces, Touched objects, Hands and Bodies more. A predictive model of object fixations controlling for a range of potential confounds suggests that most of these differences can be explained by drastically reduced text salience in pre-schoolers and that this effect is independent of low-level salience. These findings are in line with a developmental attentional antagonism between text and body parts (touched objects and hands in particular), which resonates with recent findings regarding ‘cortical recycling’. We discuss this and other potential mechanisms driving salience differences between children and adults. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T22:17:56Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-751b947929304394ae9ea07dd4b3eb4d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T22:17:56Z |
| publishDate | 2023-07-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj.art-751b947929304394ae9ea07dd4b3eb4d2023-07-23T11:14:19ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222023-07-0113111410.1038/s41598-023-38854-8Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adultsMarcel Linka0Özlem Sensoy1Harun Karimpur2Gudrun Schwarzer3Benjamin de Haas4Department of Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University GiessenDepartment of Developmental Psychology, Justus Liebig University GiessenDepartment of Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University GiessenDepartment of Developmental Psychology, Justus Liebig University GiessenDepartment of Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University GiessenAbstract Adult gaze behaviour towards naturalistic scenes is highly biased towards semantic object classes. Little is known about the ontological development of these biases, nor about group-level differences in gaze behaviour between adults and preschoolers. Here, we let preschoolers (n = 34, age 5 years) and adults (n = 42, age 18–59 years) freely view 40 complex scenes containing objects with different semantic attributes to compare their fixation behaviour. Results show that preschool children allocate a significantly smaller proportion of dwell time and first fixations on Text and instead fixate Faces, Touched objects, Hands and Bodies more. A predictive model of object fixations controlling for a range of potential confounds suggests that most of these differences can be explained by drastically reduced text salience in pre-schoolers and that this effect is independent of low-level salience. These findings are in line with a developmental attentional antagonism between text and body parts (touched objects and hands in particular), which resonates with recent findings regarding ‘cortical recycling’. We discuss this and other potential mechanisms driving salience differences between children and adults.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-38854-8 |
| spellingShingle | Marcel Linka Özlem Sensoy Harun Karimpur Gudrun Schwarzer Benjamin de Haas Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults Scientific Reports |
| title | Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults |
| title_full | Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults |
| title_fullStr | Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults |
| title_full_unstemmed | Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults |
| title_short | Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults |
| title_sort | free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-38854-8 |
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