This study aims at understanding the effects of homogeneous visual field defects on ocular movements and exploratory patterns according to their peripheral or central location. A gaze-contingent paradigm was implemented in order to display images to the participants while masking in real-time either central or peripheral areas of the participant's field of view. Results indicate a strong relation between saccade amplitudes and mask sizes. Fixations are predominantly directed toward parts of the scene which are left unmasked. In a second set of analyses, we defined relative angle as an angle between a saccade vector and a preceding one. We show that backward saccades are more frequently produced with central masking. As for peripheral masking, we observe that participants explore the scene in a sequential scanning pattern seldom foveating back to an area attended in the previous seconds. We discuss how masking conditions affect ocular behaviours in terms of exploratory patterns, as well as how relative angles unveil characteristic information distinguishing the two masking conditions from each other and from control subjects.
Visual attention refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows us to select and process only the relevant information arriving at our eyes. Therefore, eye movements will have a significant dependency on visual attention. Saliency models, trying to simulate visual gaze and consequently, visual attention, have been continuously developed over the last years. Color information has been shown to play an important role in visual attention, and it is used in saliency computations. However, psychophysical evidence explaining the relationship between color and saliency is lacking. The results of the experiment will be presented aiming at studying and quantifying saliency of colors of different hues and lightness specified in CIELab coordinates. In the experiment, 12 observers were asked to report the number of color patches presented at random locations on a masking gray background. Eye movements were recorded using an SMI remote eye tracking system and being used to validate the reported data. In the presentation, we will compare the reported data and visual gaze data for different colors and discuss implications for our understanding of color saliency and color processing.