Common contextual influences in ambiguous and rivalrous figures

Abstract

Images that resist binocular fusion undergo alternating periods of dominance and suppression, similarly to ambiguous figures whose percepts alternate between two interpretations. It has been well documented that the perceptual interpretations of both rivalrous and ambiguous figures are influenced by their spatio-temporal context. Here we consider whether an identical spatial context similarly influences the interpretation of a similar rivalrous and ambiguous figure. We developed a binocularly rivalrous stimulus whose perceptual experience mirrors that of a Necker cube. We employed a paradigm similar to that of Ouhnana and Kingdom (2016) to correlate the magnitude of influence of context between the rivalrous and ambiguous target. Our results showed that the magnitude of contextual influence is significantly correlated within observers between both binocularly rivalrous and ambiguous target figures. This points to a similar contextual-influence mechanism operating on a common mechanism underlying the perceptual instability in both ambiguous and rivalrous figures.

A tentative I/O curve with consciousness: Effects of multiple simultaneous ambiguous figures presentation on perceptual reversals and time estimation

“…Most ambiguous figures allow two object interpretations, whose perception reverses alternately from one to the other. This perceptual bistability has been investigated in its neural bases (Kornmeier & Bach, 2012;Leopold & Logothesis, 1999), in the influence on it of the mechanisms of priming (Goolkasian & Woodberry, 2010), in the effects of spatial context in which the images are presented (Ouhnana et al, 2017), in its occurrence in clinical cases (Allen & Chambers, 2011) and in its significance for the neural and behavioural correlates of consciousness ; for a general review see: Brascamp et al, 2018). Examples of ambiguous figures are the Rubin's vase-face figure (Rubin, 1915), the Necker cube (Necker, 1832), the duck-rabbit figure (McManus et al, 2010), and the old/young woman (Boring, 1930).…”