The integration of early vision, saliency models, and eye-movement control: Experiments, modeling, and spatial statistics

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The overarching goal of this project is to develop an integrated mathematical model of eye-movement guidance from the fruitful combination of two areas of research which have hitherto been treated rather separately: early spatial vision and the dynamic control of eye-movements. We started from a neuronally plausible and psychophysically evaluated population model of early spatial vision developed in Wichmann's group in Tübingen, and a dynamic modelling approach to eye-movement control and attention deployment pursued in Engbert's group in Potsdam. In the first two and a half years of funding of the project we have: (i) Performed extensive experiments measuring eye-movements and shifts of attention in visual scenes. (ii) Developed new analyses for spatial correlation functions in order to analyse the pattern of fixations in visual scenes. (iii) Developed a generative dynamic model capable of producing rich eye-movement paths. (iv) Developed the mathematical and statistical tools necessary for maximum-likelihood parameter estimation in our generative dynamic model of eye-movement control. (v) Designed a model of visual saliency based on our early spatial vision population model. (vi) Laid the foundations for an integrated mathematical model capable of both explaining data from spatial vision as well as being able to predict human eye-movement paths. In a second funding or continuation phase of our project we plan, first, to finish the development of integrated mathematical model of spatial vision and eye-movement control. Second, we plan to perform experimental tests of our model, inspired by its generative capabilities.