Attention guidance technique using visual subliminal cues and its application on video environments

Abstract

Human mind is constantly filtering out information to reduce the cognitive load, and this attention mechanism can take place independently from awareness. Even on subliminal levels, stimulus can influence the human attention mechanism, thus, influence the human behaviors such as eye movement. The unconscious shift of attention is a reflexive reaction triggered by subliminal cues, but its effect when applied in dynamic environments was unknown. This study presents a novel technique of application of subliminal cues within videos. Through the spatial cueing effect of subliminal stimuli which is shown through experiment 1, this technique incorporates a new approach in guiding ocular attention in a dynamic setting. Experiment 2 demonstrates the effect of subliminal cues in video contexts by using the subliminal cue display frequency to guide the viewer’s attention. The experiments demonstrate a new insight on application of subliminal cues in real-world scenes. Results show that cue effect is dependent on gender, with female participants showing a tendency to focus on the cued area while the male did not. Moreover, factors such as gaze orientation bias and video content had a strong impact on the overall gaze patterns.