Abstract Visual attention can be automatically captured. From an evolutionary perspective, automatic attention can be useful for rapidly detecting salient stimuli, such as foods. Two attributes of foods (tastiness and healthfulness) are needed for survival. Moreover, these two attributes have different characteristics possibly associated with automatic visual attention. The more basic and hedonic attributes of tastiness are processed earlier than those of healthfulness during elaborative food choices. However, it remains unknown how the two attributes (tastiness and healthfulness) automatically capture visual attention. To this end, we investigated the extent to which taste- and health-related food information influences automatic visual attention using eye-tracking. Thirty-seven participants engaged in the target-distractor paradigm where four images were presented (top/bottom for houses as the target, left/right for foods as the distractor). Participants indicated whether the presented targets (houses) were the same or not. Visual attention toward foods would be automatic because the participants did not have to attend to them. Tastiness, but not healthfulness, captured automatic visual attention. In addition, preferred foods did not capture automatic visual attention. Even after including confounding factors associated with the stimuli (e.g., brightness, familiarity, complexity), automatic visual attention captured by tastiness remained significant. These preliminary findings indicate that humans detect hedonic food information such as tastiness, but not healthfulness or preferences.

中文翻译：

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美味而不是健康吸引了自动视觉注意力：来自眼球追踪研究的初步证据

摘要视觉注意力可以被自动捕获。从进化的角度来看，自动注意力可用于快速检测显着刺激，例如食物。生存需要食物的两个属性（美味和健康）。此外，这两个属性具有可能与自动视觉注意相关的不同特征。在精心挑选食物的过程中，美味的更基本和享乐的属性比健康的更早被处理。然而，这两个属性（美味和健康）如何自动吸引视觉注意力仍然未知。为此，我们使用眼动追踪研究了与口味和健康相关的食物信息对自动视觉注意力的影响程度。三十七名参与者参与了目标干扰器范例，其中呈现了四个图像（顶部/底部作为目标的房屋，左/右作为干扰物的食物）。参与者指出所呈现的目标（房屋）是否相同。对食物的视觉关注将是自动的，因为参与者不必注意它们。美味，但不是健康，吸引了自动的视觉注意力。此外，偏爱的食物没有引起自动视觉注意。即使在包括与刺激相关的混杂因素（例如，亮度、熟悉度、复​​杂性）之后，由味道捕获的自动视觉注意力仍然显着。这些初步发现表明，人类会检测到享乐性食物信息，例如味道，但不会检测到健康或偏好。