The following is a summary of “Semantic object-scene inconsistencies affect eye movements, but not in the way predicted by contextualized meaning maps,” published in the February 2022 issue of Ophthalmology by Pedziwiatr, et al.

The role of semantic information in guiding eye movements is crucial. Object-scene relationships are an aspect of this influence, where semantically inconsistent objects attract more fixations than consistent objects. It has been suggested that this effect occurs because inconsistent objects are semantically more informative. For a study, researchers sought to investigate the explanation using contextualized meaning maps, which use crowd-sourced ratings to determine the spatial distribution of context-sensitive “meaning” in images. 

In Experiment 1, the study compared gaze data and contextualized meaning maps for images with manipulated object-scene consistency. Results showed that observers fixated more on inconsistent objects but contextualized meaning maps did not assign higher meaning to image regions containing semantic inconsistencies. In Experiment 2, the study had many raters evaluate image regions selected for their content and expected meaningfulness. 

The results suggested that the same scene locations were experienced as slightly less meaningful when they contained inconsistencies than consistent objects. Overall, the study demonstrated that semantically inconsistent objects were experienced as less meaningful than consistent objects and that contextualized meaning maps do not capture typical influences of image meaning on gaze guidance, at least in the context of the rating task used.

Reference: arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2778574