OSIEshort: A small stimulus set can reliably estimate individual differences in semantic salience

Recent findings revealed consistent individual differences in fixation tendencies among observers free-viewing complex scenes. The present study aimed at (1) replicating these differences, and (2) testing whether they can be estimated using a shorter test. In total, 103 participants completed two eye-tracking sessions. The first session was a direct replication of the original study, but the second session used a smaller subset of images, optimized to capture individual differences efficiently. The first session replicated the large and consistent individual differences along five semantic dimensions observed in the original study. The second session showed that these differences can be estimated using about 40 to 100 images (depending on the tested dimension). Additional analyses revealed that only the first 2 seconds of viewing duration seem to be informative regarding these differences. Taken together, our findings suggest that reliable individual differences in semantic salience can be estimated with a test totaling less than 2 minutes of viewing duration.