The influence of image quality on scene consistency effects: Evidence from the eye tracking

People are accustomed to seeing certain objects in specific and recurring contexts in daily life. Many research results have indicated that consistent scene could result in better object recognition. Research has also shown that contextual regularities and image quality can help us to form rapid judgments of particular objects and summon our attention when the objects appear to be incongruent with our expectations. Based on attention restoration theory, this study aims to investigate the influence of contexts on object recognition by adopting eye tracking techniques. 4 groups of college students (N=20) were asked to view 52 full-color scene photographs with 4 levels of image quality repeatedly and recognize the shown objects at the same time, during which their eye movements were recorded. Results indicated that (1) compared with consistent object, participants recognized inconsistent objects more slowly (F(1,28) = 27.1, p <0.001), less accurately (F(1,28) = 19.6, p <0.001), fixating longer (F(1,28) = 23.6, p <0.001), fixating more frequently (F(1,28) = 42.3, p <0.001) and more fixations prior (F(1,28) = 16.9, p <0.001). (2) compared with the objects with original image quality, the objects with degradation qualities were harder to be recognized, presented less accurately (F(1,28)=8.13, p<0.01), longer reaction time (F(1,28)=6.40, p<0.05), longer fixation time (F(1,28)=9.68, p<0.01) and more frequent fixation (F(1,28)=10.1, p<0.01). (3) the more the image quality was degraded, the less contextual clues were obtained, which may reduce the effect of semantic consistency.