Eye movements are made to the centre of gravity of texture-defined targets

Sidhu, Shumetha K.; Allen, Harriet A.; Keeble, David R.T.

Abstract

Saccadic localisation of targets of various properties has been extensively studied, but rarely for texture-defined figures. In this paper, three experiments that investigate the way information from a texture target is processed in order to provide a signal for eye movement control are presented. Participants made saccades to target regions embedded in a background structure, and the saccade landing position and latency were measured. The textures comprised line elements, with orientations of the lines configured to form the figure and ground. Various orientation profile configurations (Block, Blur, and Cornsweet), were used in order to measure the role of edge profiles in driving eye movements and producing salience. We found that in all cases the visual system is in fact able to effectively segregate a texture figure from the ground in order to accurately plan a saccade to the target-figure. While saccadic latency was the highest for the Blur profile, the mean saccadic landing position was mostly unaffected by the various profiles (Experiment 1). More specifically, we showed that saccades were directed to the centre-of-gravity of the target (Experiment 2). We also found that figures with information of orientation contrast at both the edge and centre of figure (i.e. Block) produced the highest level of saliency in attracting eye movements (Experiment 3). Overall, the results show that saccades are planned on the representation of the whole target shape rather than a local salient region based on orientation contrast cues, and that the various texture profiles were important only to the extent that they affected the time to programme a saccade.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 9, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jun 3, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-09
• Deposit Date: Aug 25, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 25, 2023
• Journal: Vision Research
• Electronic ISSN: 1878-5646
• Publisher: Elsevier BV
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 210
• Article Number: 108264
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2023.108264
• Keywords: Saccade position, Saccadic reaction time, Texture Segregation, Eye Movements, Figure-ground segregation, Orientation-defined texture targets
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/22173247
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698923000883?via%3Dihub
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Eye movements are made to the centre of gravity of texture-defined targets; Journal Title: Vision Research; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2023.108264; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.