How do we decide which objects in a visual scene are more interesting? While intuition may point toward high-level object recognition and cognitive processes, here we investigate the contributions of a much simpler process, low-level visual saliency. We used the LabelMe database (24,863 photographs with 74,454 manually outlined objects) to evaluate how often interesting objects were among the few most salient locations predicted by a computational model of bottom-up attention. In 43 % of all images the model’s predicted most salient location falls within a labeled region (chance 21%). Furthermore, in 76 % of the images (chance 43%), one or more of the top three salient locations fell on an outlined object, with performance leveling off after six predicted locations. The bottom-up attention model has neither notion of object nor notion of semantic relevance. Hence, our results indicate that selecting interesting objects in a scene is largely constrained by low-level visual properties rather than solely determined by higher cognitive processes.

This paper presents a new computational framework for modelling visual-object based attention and attention-driven eye movements within an integrated system in a biologically inspired approach. Attention operates at multiple levels of visual selection by space, feature, object and group depending on the nature of targets and visual tasks. Attentional shifts and gaze shifts are constructed upon their common process circuits and control mechanisms but also separated from their different function roles, working together to fulfil flexible visual selection tasks in complicated visual environments. The framework integrates the important aspects of human visual attention and eye movements resulting in sophisticated performance in complicated natural scenes. The proposed approach aims at exploring a useful visual selection system for computer vision, especially for usage in cluttered natural visual environments. Key words: Visual-object based competition, space-based attention, object-based attention, group-based attention, foveated imaging, attention-driven eye

Biological visual attention has been long studied by experts in the field of cognitive psychology. The Holy Grail of this study is the exact modeling of the interaction between the visual sensory and the process of perception. It seems that there is an informal agreement on the four important functions of the attention process: (a) the bottom-up process, which is responsible for the saliency of the input stimuli; (b) the top-down process that bias attention toward known areas or regions of predefined characteristics; (c) the attentional selection that fuses information derived from the two previous processes and enables focus; and (d) the dynamic evolution of the attentional selection process. In the following, we will outline established computational solutions for each of the four functions.