Evidence of Clutter Avoidance in Complex Scenes

Abstract

Eye tracking results from a recent visual search experiment suggest 1) people avoid searching in highly cluttered regions of displays, and 2) people tend to start searching in regions with lower clutter and progress to regions with higher clutter as needed. Subjects searched for a symbol randomly placed in displays containing varying amounts of clutter, measured with the C3 clutter metric (Lohrenz et al., 2009). Displays were categorized as having low, medium, or high “global” clutter (average clutter for the display). Displays were gridded into 100 cells, and a “local” C3 value was calculated for each cell. An eye-tracker monitored search behavior. On average, with low and medium global-clutter displays, subjects searched in areas with local clutter similar to the displays' global clutter; with high global-clutter displays, subjects searched in areas with significantly lower local clutter (relative to global clutter). The average clutter of cells in which subjects searched plateaued at C3=6.4 (on a scale from 0 to 12), suggesting a measurable limit to the amount of clutter through which subjects are able (or willing) to search.