Prioritizing new objects for eye fixation in real-world scenes: Effects of object–scene consistency

Recent research suggests that new objects appearing in real-world scenes are prioritized for eye fixations and by inference, for attentional processing. We examined whether semantic consistency modulates the degree to which new objects appearing in a scene are prioritized for viewing. New objects were added to photographs of real-world scenes during a fixation (new object with transient onset) or during a saccade (new object without transient onset). The added object was either consistent or inconsistent with the scene’s meaning. Object consistency did not affect the efficacy with which transient onsets captured attention, suggesting that transient motion signals capture attention in a bottom-up manner. Without a transient motion signal, the semantic consistency of the new object affected its prioritization with new inconsistent objects fixated sooner than new consistent objects, suggesting that attention prioritization without capture is a top-down memory-based phenomenon at least partially controlled by object identity and meaning.