title: Competition in bistable vision is attribute-specific.
abstract: We employ ambiguous figures and rivalrous stimuli that have multiple ambiguous properties to show that the different attributes of an ambiguous stimulus can undergo independent switching dynamics. This suggests that competition is distributed and attribute-specific, consistent with the known functional segregation of visual processing. Conflicting evidence that binocular rivalry is an early or late visual process may be better understood as evidence for attribute-specific competition occurring at multiple stages of visual processing. Specifically, we show that whether perceptual selection during binocular rivalry is early and eye-based or late and percept-based depends on the particular ambiguous attributes of the rivalrous stimulus.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vision Science Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL 35294, USA. jgrosman@uab.edu
authors.forename: Jon K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Grossmann
authors.forename: Allan C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Dobbins
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D015357:Vision Disparity / Q000502:physiology; D015348:Vision, Binocular / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*