Attention To Visual Cues Research Articles

The attentional guidance and facilitating effects of group behavioral cues on individual college pedestrians’ jaywalking decisions

Objective Jaywalking is an important cause of pedestrian-related automobile accidents. Exploring the factors that influence jaywalking behavior and suggesting appropriate improvement measures are critical for reducing automobile accidents involving pedestrians. Methods This study divided traffic situations into high-risk and low-risk situations. Each situation contained three visual attention cues: vehicle, traffic light, and group behavior. Based on this, the role of visual cues in guiding pedestrians’ attention and influencing their decisions during jaywalking was examined. Sixty participants, with an average age of 19, were recruited. They were shown 84 crosswalk videos randomly while their crossing decisions and eye movement data were recorded. Results In low-risk situations, pedestrians spent more attention on group behavioral cues when making jaywalking decisions. The rate of jaywalking increased with the number of other jaywalking pedestrians. In high-risk situations, the pedestrians’ total fixation duration at vehicle hazard cues was longer when making jaywalking decisions, and the jaywalking rate decreased. Conclusions The results indicate that pedestrians’ jaywalking decisions were based on other pedestrians’ illegal crossing cues and automatic associative processes in low-risk situations. The higher the number of people crossing the street, the higher the number of pedestrians illegally crossing the road. In high-risk situations, pedestrians paid more attention to vehicle hazard cues before making jaywalking decisions, and fewer illegal crossings. The jaywalking decisions were based on a risk assessment, a controlled analytical process. The results verify the effect of visual cues on pedestrians’ attentional guidance and decision-making in different traffic situations, as well as the effectiveness of visual attention in predicting decision intention. The findings provide a theoretical basis and data reference for pedestrian safety education and constructing an intelligent driving pedestrian trajectory prediction model.

Visual Attention and Color Cues for 6D Pose Estimation on Occluded Scenarios Using RGB-D Data.

Recently, 6D pose estimation methods have shown robust performance on highly cluttered scenes and different illumination conditions. However, occlusions are still challenging, with recognition rates decreasing to less than 10% for half-visible objects in some datasets. In this paper, we propose to use top-down visual attention and color cues to boost performance of a state-of-the-art method on occluded scenarios. More specifically, color information is employed to detect potential points in the scene, improve feature-matching, and compute more precise fitting scores. The proposed method is evaluated on the Linemod occluded (LM-O), TUD light (TUD-L), Tejani (IC-MI) and Doumanoglou (IC-BIN) datasets, as part of the SiSo BOP benchmark, which includes challenging highly occluded cases, illumination changing scenarios, and multiple instances. The method is analyzed and discussed for different parameters, color spaces and metrics. The presented results show the validity of the proposed approach and their robustness against illumination changes and multiple instance scenarios, specially boosting the performance on relatively high occluded cases. The proposed solution provides an absolute improvement of up to 30% for levels of occlusion between 40% to 50%, outperforming other approaches with a best overall recall of 71% for the LM-O, 92% for TUD-L, 99.3% for IC-MI and 97.5% for IC-BIN.

Fast spiking interneuron activity in primate striatum tracks learning of attention cues

Cognitive flexibility depends on a fast neural learning mechanism for enhancing momentary relevant over irrelevant information. A possible neural mechanism realizing this enhancement uses fast spiking interneurons (FSIs) in the striatum to train striatal projection neurons to gate relevant and suppress distracting cortical inputs. We found support for such a mechanism in nonhuman primates during the flexible adjustment of visual attention in a reversal learning task. FSI activity was modulated by visual attention cues during feature-based learning. One FSI subpopulation showed stronger activation during learning, while another FSI subpopulation showed response suppression after learning, which could indicate a disinhibitory effect on the local circuit. Additionally, FSIs that showed response suppression to learned attention cues were activated by salient distractor events, suggesting they contribute to suppressing bottom-up distraction. These findings suggest that striatal fast spiking interneurons play an important role when cues are learned that redirect attention away from previously relevant to newly relevant visual information. This cue-specific activity was independent of motor-related activity and thus tracked specifically the learning of reward predictive visual features.

Unconscious or underpowered? Probabilistic cuing of visual attention.

Recent debate about the reliability of psychological research has raised concerns about the prevalence of false positives in our discipline. However, false negatives can be just as concerning in areas of research that depend on finding support for the absence of an effect. This risk is particularly high in unconscious learning experiments, where researchers commonly seek to demonstrate that people can learn to perform a task in the absence of any explicit knowledge of the information that drives performance. The fact that some unconscious learning effects are typically studied with small samples and unreliable awareness measures makes false negatives especially likely. In the present article we focus on a popular unconscious learning paradigm, probabilistic cuing of visual attention, as a case study. First, we show that, at the meta-analytic level, previous experiments reveal positive signs of participant awareness, although individual studies are severely underpowered to detect this. Second, we report the results of 2 empirical studies in which participants' awareness was tested with alternative and more sensitive dependent measures, both of which manifest positive evidence of awareness. We also show that, based on the predictions of a formal model of probabilistic cuing and given the reliabilities of the dependent measures collected in these experiments, any statistical test aimed at detecting a significant correlation between learning and awareness is doomed to return a nonsignificant result, even if at the latent level both constructs are actually related and participants' knowledge is completely explicit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Unconscious or Underpowered? Probabilistic Cuing of Visual Attention

Supplemental Material for Unconscious or Underpowered? Probabilistic Cuing of Visual Attention

Traffic sign detection based on visual co-saliency in complex scenes

Co-saliency detection aims at finding the salient regions from multiple images which capture the focus of human visual system. In this paper, a novel visual co-saliency algorithm is proposed, which adopts three human visual attention cues: contrast, center-bias and symmetry. In order to apply co-saliency to the detection of traffic signs, a traffic sign detection framework based on visual co-saliency in complex scenes is devised. The detection process involves two stages. In the first stage, a cluster-based co-saliency model is built to generate the final co-saliency map. In the second stage, a geometric structure constraint model is constructed to discriminate the detected salient objects and then accurately achieve location of traffic signs. The advantage of our approach lies in the integration of bottom-up and top-down visual processing, and no heavy learning tasks. Experiments on a variety of benchmark databases illustrate high precision, high recall and operation efficiency of the proposed approach. Besides, for traffic sign detection it overcomes the interference of complex urbanization backgrounds. Furthermore, the best trade-off between precision and recall on warning signs is achieved, reaching 93.30% and 89.06%, respectively.

Cultural Variation in Triadic Infant-Caregiver Object Exploration.

Two studies examined the extent to which the type of triadic interaction pervasive in Western populations (i.e., shared visual attention and ostensive pedagogical cues) was representative of infant-caregiver object exploration in a non-Western indigenous community. Caregivers in the United States and Vanuatu interacted with infants and a novel object for 3min. In Study 1 (N=116, Mage =29.05), Ni-Van caregivers used more physical triadic engagement and U.S. caregivers used more visual triadic engagement. In Study 2 (N=80, Mage =29.91), U.S. caregivers were more likely than Ni-Van caregivers to transmit an action and to use visual cues while interacting with their child. These studies demonstrate that the Western model of early social learning is not universal.

Object-level saliency detection with color attributes

Recently, saliency detection has been becoming a popular topic in computer vision. In this paper we propose an object-level saliency detection algorithm which explicitly explores bottom-up visual attention and objectness cues. Firstly, some category-independent object candidates are segmented from the image by the quantized color attributes. Then two metrics, global cues and candidate objectness, are developed to estimate the saliency in the whole image and the object candidates respectively. We use global cues to describe the focusness and spatial distribution of color attributes in the entire image. As supplementary, candidate objectness can reveal the objectness of the object candidates. Finally, we integrate the two saliency cues to derive a saliency map of the image. By explicitly fusing candidate objectness and global cues, our proposed method is more suitable for processing images with complex background. Experimental results on three large benchmark databases demonstrate that the proposed method achieves more favorable performance than 15 recent state-of-the-art methods in terms of three evaluation criterions.

Visual Attention Model Aided Non-Uniform Asymmetric Coding of Stereoscopic Video

Owing to its wide-interoperability, stereoscopic 3D video format in High Definition (HD) is a popular choice for 3D entertainment media distribution. However, the delivery over bandwidth constrained networks exhibits challenges in terms of intermittent congestions in the network traffic, which enforce the delivery system to perform perception-aware coding to save bandwidth. In the scope of stereoscopic 3D video, asymmetric quality adaptation has proved to be an effective method in terms of maintaining the perceived quality while reducing the required transmission bandwidth. On the other hand, Region-Of-Interest (ROI) based coding in accordance with the visual attention cues, which offers non-uniform quality assignment to regions of different saliency levels has not been widely studied in combination with asymmetric coding of stereoscopic 3D video. In this work, the effectiveness of using visual attention aided non-uniform asymmetric 3D video coding is explored. The importance of incorporating compression artefacts in the formulation of visual attention model is also revealed. The discussions in this paper are based on a comprehensive subjective test with 8 stereoscopic video sequences of different spatial and temporal characteristics at different conditions.

Cluster-based co-saliency detection.

Co-saliency is used to discover the common saliency on the multiple images, which is a relatively underexplored area. In this paper, we introduce a new cluster-based algorithm for co-saliency detection. Global correspondence between the multiple images is implicitly learned during the clustering process. Three visual attention cues: contrast, spatial, and corresponding, are devised to effectively measure the cluster saliency. The final co-saliency maps are generated by fusing the single image saliency and multiimage saliency. The advantage of our method is mostly bottom-up without heavy learning, and has the property of being simple, general, efficient, and effective. Quantitative and qualitative experiments result in a variety of benchmark datasets demonstrating the advantages of the proposed method over the competing co-saliency methods. Our method on single image also outperforms most the state-of-the-art saliency detection methods. Furthermore, we apply the co-saliency method on four vision applications: co-segmentation, robust image distance, weakly supervised learning, and video foreground detection, which demonstrate the potential usages of the co-saliency map.

Attention to attention in domestic dog (Canis familiaris) dyadic play

The social cognitive capacities of dogs, including their communication skills and use of visual attention cues, have recently been investigated in numerous experimental studies. This paper reports on research of domestic dog behavior in a natural setting, which shows sensitivity to the visual attention of their partners when engaged in dyadic rough-and-tumble play. The sequential behaviors and head-direction of both dogs were noted throughout the bouts. The behaviors were differentially used according to the partner's posture. Play signals were sent nearly exclusively to forward-facing conspecifics; attention-getting behaviors were used most often when a playmate was facing away, and before signaling an interest to play. In addition, the mode of attention-getter matched the degree of inattentiveness of the playmate: stronger attention-getters were used when a playmate was looking away or distracted, less forceful ones when the partner was facing forward or laterally. In other words, these dogs showed attention to, and acted to manipulate, a feature of other dogs that mediates their ability to respond: which feature in human interaction is called "attention".

Directing visual attention with spatially informative and spatially noninformative tactile cues

We investigated the tactile cuing of visual spatial attention using spatially-informative (75% valid) and spatially-noninformative (25% valid) tactile cues. The participants performed a visual change detection task following the presentation of a tactile spatial cue on their back whose location corresponded to one of the four visual quadrants on a computer monitor. The participants were explicitly instructed to use the spatially-informative tactile cues but to ignore the spatially-noninformative cues. In addition to reaction time data, participants' eye-gaze was monitored as a measure of overt visual attention. The results showed that the spatially-informative tactile cues resulted in initial saccades toward the cued visual quadrants, and significantly reduced the visual change detection latencies. When spatially-noninformative tactile cues were used, the participants were largely successful at ignoring them as indicated by a saccade distribution that was independent of the quadrant that was cued, as well as the lack of a significant change in search time as compared to the baseline measure of no tactile cuing. The eye-gaze data revealed that the participants could not always completely ignore the spatially-noninformative tactile cues. Our results suggest that the tactile cuing of visual attention is natural but not automatic when the tactile cue and visual target are not collocated spatially, and that it takes effort to ignore the cues even when they are known to provide no useful information. In addition, our results confirm previous findings that spatially-informative tactile cues are especially effective at directing overt visual attention to locations that are not typically monitored visually, such as the bottom of a computer screen or the rearview mirror in an automobile.

Spatial orienting of tactile attention induced by social cues

Several studies have established that humans orient their visual attention reflexively in response to social cues such as the direction of someone else's gaze. However, the consequences of this kind of orienting have been addressed only for the visual system. We investigated whether visual social attention cues can induce shifts in tactile attention by combining a central noninformative eye-gaze cue with tactile targets presented to participants' fingertips. Data from speeded detection, speeded discrimination, and signal detection tasks converged on the same conclusion: Eye-gaze-based orienting facilitates the processing of tactile targets at the location of the gazed-at body location. In addition, we examined the effects of other directional cues, such as conventional arrows, and found that they can be equally effective. This is the first demonstration that social attention cues have consequences that reach beyond their own sensory modality.

Use of human visual attention cues by olive baboons (Papio anubis) in a competitive task.

The ability of 4 olive baboons (Papio anubis) to use human gaze cues during a competitive food task was investigated. Three baboons used head orientation as a cue, and 1 individual also used eye direction alone. As the baboons did not receive prior training with gestural cues, their performance suggests that the competitive paradigm may be more appropriate for testing nonhuman primates than the standard object-choice paradigm. However, the baboons were insensitive to whether the experimenter could actually perceive the food item, and therefore the use of visual orientation cues may not be indicative of visual perspective-taking abilities. Performance was disrupted by the introduction of a screen and objects to conceal food items and by the absence of movement in cues presented.

Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention.

Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention.

Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention.

Previous research has shown how spatial attention is guided to a target location, but little is understood about how attention is allocated to an event in time. The authors introduce a paradigm to manipulate the sequential structure of visual events independent of responses. They asked whether this temporal context could be implicitly learned and used to guide attention to a relative point in time or location, or both, in space. Experiments show that sequentially structured event durations, event identities, and spatiotemporal event sequences can guide attention to a point in time as well as to a target event's identity and location. Cuing was found to rely heavily on the element immediately preceding the target, although cuing from earlier items also was evident. Learning was implicit in all cases. These results show that the sequential structure of the visual world plays an important role in guiding visual attention to target events.

Sensitivity and criterion effects in the spatial cuing of visual attention.

This study is concerned with three questions about the role of attention in peripheral detection: (1) Is the increased detection rate for spatial locations with high probabilities of target occurrence assigned to them due to sensitivity or criterion effects? (2) Does the effect of spatial cuing (probabilistic priming) require different explanations for letter detection and detection of luminance increments (Shaw, 1984)? (3) Can attention be shared between two separate locations cued to be most likely (Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980)? These questions were investigated in two experiments, both using a signal detection plus localization task (rating method). In Experiment 1 (symbol detection), single or double cues indicating one or two most likely locations (three or two least likely locations) were presented. Introducing the second cued location resulted in a marked sensitivity gain for this position, relative to uncued locations in the single-cue condition. Decision criteria were more liberal for cued and more conservative for uncued locations. In Experiment 2, a luminance increment (single target probe) and two symbol detection (target plus distractors) tasks were compared. For symbol detection, there was a marked priming effect; but for luminance detection, cued locations showed no advantage in sensitivity. However, all tasks showed differential criterion setting for cued and for uncued locations. These results suggest that letter detection is capacity limited, whereas luminance increment detection is not, and furthermore, that decision criteria are largely preset according to a priori target probabilities assigned to particular locations.