How do spatial constraints and meaningful scene regions interact to control overt attention during visual search for objects in real-world scenes? To answer this question, we combined novel surface maps of the likely locations of target objects with maps of the spatial distribution of scene semantic content. The surface maps captured likely target surfaces as continuous probabilities. Meaning was represented by meaning maps highlighting the distribution of semantic content in local scene regions. Attention was indexed by eye movements during the search for target objects that varied in the likelihood they would appear on specific surfaces. The interaction between surface maps and meaning maps was analyzed to test whether fixations were directed to meaningful scene regions on target-related surfaces. Overall, meaningful scene regions were more likely to be fixated if they appeared on target-related surfaces than if they appeared on target-unrelated surfaces. These findings suggest that the visual system prioritizes meaningful scene regions on target-related surfaces during visual search in scenes.

中文翻译：

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意义和预期表面相结合，在场景中进行视觉搜索时引导注意力。

在现实世界场景中视觉搜索对象时，空间约束和有意义的场景区域如何相互作用以控制显性注意力？为了回答这个问题，我们将目标对象可能位置的新颖表面图与场景语义内容的空间分布图结合起来。表面图将可能的目标表面捕获为连续概率。意义由意义图表示，突出显示局部场景区域中语义内容的分布。在搜索目标物体时，注意力是通过眼球运动来索引的，目标物体出现在特定表面上的可能性各不相同。分析表面图和意义图之间的交互，以测试注视是否定向到目标相关表面上的有意义的场景区域。总体而言，如果有意义的场景区域出现在与目标相关的表面上，则比出现在与目标无关的表面上更容易被固定。这些发现表明，在场景中的视觉搜索过程中，视觉系统会优先考虑目标相关表面上有意义的场景区域。