Common contextual influences in ambiguous and rivalrous figures

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 12; no. 5; p. e0176842
• Main Authors: Ouhnana, Marouane, Jennings, Ben J, Kingdom, Frederick A A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 01-05-2017; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adaptation; Adults; Ambiguity; Asymmetry; Bayesian analysis; Binocular vision; Biology and Life Sciences; Brain; Coherence; Color; Competition; Conditioning; Context effects (Psychology); Cylinders; Documents; Eye; Eye (anatomy); Eyes & eyesight; Fatigue; Feedback; Form Perception; Gratings (spectra); Humans; Influence; Inhibition; Medicine and Health Sciences; Motion Perception; Nervous system; Neurons; Ocular dominance; Optical Illusions; Optometry; Orientation; Orientation behavior; Perception; Photic Stimulation - methods; Physical properties; Physical Sciences; Priming; Psychological Tests; Psychology; Psychophysics; Representations; Rotation; Social Sciences; Stimuli (Psychology); Studies; Vision; Vision, Binocular; Visual perception; Visual stimuli; Canada; Montreal Quebec Canada; Quebec Canada
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176842

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.