The causal influence of visual salience on gaze guidance during scene search and memorization

Visual salience at fixation is often reported as significantly higher than chance. However, it is unclear if this gaze behaviour is caused by visual salience as comparisons have always been between objects or scenes. In the present study the salience of a target object was manipulated within scenes. Removing visual salience had a minimal effect on gaze behaviour but increasing saliency significantly increased the probability of early fixation during both search and memorisation. These results suggest that visual salience may play a causal role in fixation probability but its contribution independent from cognitive relevance is currently unknown.