ABSTRACT

Landmark visual salience (characterized by features that contrast with their surroundings and visual peculiarities) and semantic salience (characterized by features with unusual or important meaning and content in the environment) are two important factors that affect an individual’s visual attention during wayfinding. However, empirical evidence regarding which factor dominates visual guidance during indoor wayfinding is rare, especially in real-world environments. In this study, we assumed that semantic salience dominates the guidance of visual attention, which means that semantic salience will correlate with participants’ fixations more significantly than visual salience. Notably, in previous studies, semantic salience was shown to guide visual attention in static images or familiar scenes in a laboratory environment. To validate this assumption, first, we collected the eye movement data of 22 participants as they found their way through a building. We then computed the landmark visual and semantic salience using computer vision models and questionnaires, respectively. Finally, we conducted correlation tests to verify our assumption. The results failed to validate our assumption and show that the role of salience in visual guidance in a real-world wayfinding process is different from the role of salience in perceiving static images or scenes in a laboratory. Visual salience dominates visual attention during indoor wayfinding, but the roles of salience in visual guidance are mixed across different landmark classes and tasks. The results provide new evidence for understanding how pedestrians visually interpret landmark information during real-world indoor wayfinding.

摘要

具有里程碑意义的视觉显着性（以与周围环境和视觉特性形成鲜明对比的特征为特征）和语义显着性（以在环境中具有异常或重要意义和内容的特征为特征）是影响个人在寻路过程中视觉注意力的两个重要因素。但是，关于在室内寻路期间哪个因素主导视觉引导的经验证据很少，尤其是在现实环境中。在这项研究中，我们假设语义显着性主导视觉注意力，这意味着语义显着性与参与者注视的相关性比视觉显着性更重要。值得注意的是，在先前的研究中，语义显着性被显示为引导静态图像或实验室环境中熟悉的场景中的视觉注意力。为了验证这一假设，首先，我们收集了22位参与者通过建筑物时的眼动数据。然后，我们分别使用计算机视觉模型和调查表计算了标志性视觉和语义显着性。最后，我们进行了相关测试以验证我们的假设。结果未能证实我们的假设，并表明显着性在现实世界中的寻路过程中在视觉引导中的作用不同于显着性在实验室中感知静态图像或场景的作用。在室内寻路过程中，视觉显着性主导着视觉注意力，但是显着性在视觉引导中的作用在不同的地标类别和任务之间是混杂的。