Enduring Interest in Perceptual Ambiguity Alternating Views of Reversible Figures

• Published in: Psychological bulletin Vol. 130; no. 5; pp. 748 - 768
• Main Authors: Long, Gerald M, Toppino, Thomas C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-09-2004
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Ambiguous figures; Attitude; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognitive Processes; Cognitive processing; Cognitive style; Evaluation Methods; Eyes & eyesight; Figurative Language; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Literature reviews; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Perception; Psychological Studies; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Research Methodology; Reversible; Sensory perception; Stimulus Ambiguity; Vision; Visual Perception; Human; Perception; Cognition; Review; Stimulus ambiguity; Vision
• ISSN: 0033-2909; 1939-1455
• DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.130.5.748

Research favoring the so-called
bottom-up
and
top-down
classes of explanations for reversible figures that dominated the literature in last half of the 20th century is reviewed. Two conclusions are offered. First, any single-process model is extremely unlikely to be able to accommodate the wide array of empirical findings, suggesting that the "final" explanation will almost certainly involve a hybrid conceptualization of interacting sensory and cognitive processes. Second, the utility of distinguishing between 2 components of the observer's experience with reversible figures is emphasized. This distinction between the observer's ability to access multiple representations from the single stimulus pattern (
ambiguity
) and the observer's phenomenal experience of oscillation between those representations (
reversibility
) permits the literature to be segregated into useful categories of research that expose overlapping but distinctive cortical processes.