A Cognitive Model of Saliency, Attention, and Picture Scanning

To view and understand the visual world, we shift our gaze from one location to another about three times per second. These rapid changes in gaze direction result from very fast eye movements called saccades. Visual information is acquired only during fixations, stationary periods between saccades. Active visual search of pictures is the process of active scanning of the visual environment for a particular target among distracters or for the extraction of its meaning. This article discusses a cognitive model of saliency, overt attention, and natural picture scanning that unravels the neurocomputational mechanisms of how human gaze control operates during active real-world scene viewing.