Early peripheral and foveal processing in fixations during scene perception

Abstract

To compare early foveal and peripheral information extraction, visual scenes were masked either foveally or peripherally during the initial part of fixations, using an eye-movement contingent display-change technique. The sequential attention model of eye-movement control predicts a substantial effect of early foveal masking, and early peripheral masking should not affect the ongoing processing. Foveal masking indeed postponed foveal processing as reflected by a considerable increase of average fixation durations with longer masking (Experiments 1 and 3). However, there was also an effect of peripheral masking, mainly on the saccade target selections with an increased number of fixations (Experiment 3) in conjunction with smaller saccade amplitudes (Experiments 2 and 3). Overall, scene perception was more influenced by early foveal masking than by early peripheral masking, and this is partly in agreement with the sequential attention model of eye-movement control.