Brascamp Jan W, Becker Mark W, Hambrick David Z
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
J Vis. 2018 Jul 2;18(7):3. doi: 10.1167/18.7.3.
Simultaneously showing an observer two incompatible displays, one to each eye, causes binocular rivalry, during which the observer regularly switches between perceiving one eye's display and perceiving the other. Observers differ in the rate of this perceptual cycle, and these individual differences have been reported to correlate with differences in the perceptual switch rate for other bistable perception phenomena. Identifying which psychological or neural factors explain this variability can help clarify the mechanisms underlying binocular rivalry and of bistable perception generally. Motivated by the prominent theory that perceptual switches during binocular rivalry are brought about by neural adaptation, we investigated whether perceptual switch rates are correlated with the strength of neural adaptation, indexed by visual aftereffects. We found no compelling evidence for such correlations. Moreover, we did not corroborate previous findings that switch rates are correlated between binocular rivalry and other forms of bistable perception. This latter nonreplication prompted us to perform a meta-analysis of existing research into correlations among forms of bistable perception, which revealed that evidence for such correlations is much weaker than is generally believed. By showing no common factor linking individual differences in binocular rivalry and in our other paradigms, these results fit well with other work that has shown such common factors to be rare among visual phenomena generally.
同时向观察者的两只眼睛分别展示两个不兼容的图像会引发双眼竞争，在此期间观察者会在感知一只眼睛所看到的图像和另一只眼睛所看到的图像之间有规律地切换。观察者在这种感知循环的速率上存在差异，据报道，这些个体差异与其他双稳态感知现象的感知切换速率差异相关。确定哪些心理或神经因素能够解释这种变异性，有助于阐明双眼竞争以及一般双稳态感知背后的机制。基于双眼竞争期间的感知切换是由神经适应引起的这一突出理论，我们研究了感知切换速率是否与以视觉后效为指标的神经适应强度相关。我们没有找到支持这种相关性的有力证据。此外，我们也没有证实之前关于双眼竞争与其他形式双稳态感知之间的切换速率存在相关性的研究结果。后一项未能重复验证的结果促使我们对双稳态感知形式之间相关性的现有研究进行荟萃分析，结果表明这种相关性的证据比普遍认为的要弱得多。这些结果通过表明在双眼竞争和我们的其他范式中个体差异之间不存在共同因素，与其他研究结果相契合，这些研究表明这种共同因素在视觉现象中普遍很少见。
