The Relationship Between Visual Attention and Event Segmentation in Ongoing Perception

Presentation Type

Poster/Portfolio

Presenter Major(s)

Psychology

Mentor Information

Christopher Kurby

Department

Psychology

Location

Henry Hall Atrium 54

Start Date

10-4-2013 1:00 PM

End Date

10-4-2013 2:00 PM

Keywords

Social Science

Abstract

Event segmentation theory (EST) states that that people break continuous experiences down into discrete units or events. These events are perceived as a partonomic hierarchy with smaller events clustered by larger events. Event segmentation may be influenced by different information based on whether subjects are attending to the higher-level events (i.e., coarse) or lower-level events (i.e., fine). We measured eye movements and segmentation behavior to assess if visual attention changes, across viewings, with the grain at which people segment everyday activities. We found that although participants clearly segmented at different grain sizes effectively - they segmented more often for fine than coarse - their eye movements are highly similar. This suggests that a) eye movements during naturalistic viewing of activity is strongly stimulus driven and b) event models of different grain levels do not differentially control low-level visual attention, but rather the encoding of information.

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Apr 10th, 1:00 PM Apr 10th, 2:00 PM

The Relationship Between Visual Attention and Event Segmentation in Ongoing Perception

Henry Hall Atrium 54

Event segmentation theory (EST) states that that people break continuous experiences down into discrete units or events. These events are perceived as a partonomic hierarchy with smaller events clustered by larger events. Event segmentation may be influenced by different information based on whether subjects are attending to the higher-level events (i.e., coarse) or lower-level events (i.e., fine). We measured eye movements and segmentation behavior to assess if visual attention changes, across viewings, with the grain at which people segment everyday activities. We found that although participants clearly segmented at different grain sizes effectively - they segmented more often for fine than coarse - their eye movements are highly similar. This suggests that a) eye movements during naturalistic viewing of activity is strongly stimulus driven and b) event models of different grain levels do not differentially control low-level visual attention, but rather the encoding of information.