Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 316 Physics Rd, East Lansing 48823, MI, United States.
Vision Res. 2022 Dec;201:108118. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2022.108118. Epub 2022 Sep 1.
When faced with ambiguous visual input, observers may experience various perceptual interpretations of the same input. Indeed, such input can cause perception to unpredictably switch between interpretations over time. Theories of such so-called multistable perception broadly fall into two categories: top-down theories that emphasize dependence on higher-level cognitive factors such as knowledge, and bottom-up theories that suggest more vital involvement of aspects of lower-order information processing such as adaptation in the visual system. Most present-day accounts hold that both factors play a role, so that perceptual reversals arise inevitably due to factors like adaptation, yet can be delayed or hastened by higher-level cognitive influences. We revisited a body of work that shows the occurrence of perceptual reversals to depend dramatically on the observer's knowledge that the input is, indeed, ambiguous: without such knowledge many observers in that work did not experience any reversals, in apparent conflict with the idea that reversals are inevitable. We used an ambiguous animation that allowed subjects to report perceptual reversals without realizing the ambiguity. We found that subjects who were aware of the animation's ambiguity reported slightly more perceptual reversals than uninformed subjects, but that this between-group difference was small, and was overshadowed by inter-observer variability within each group. These findings suggest that knowledge of ambiguity can influence perception of ambiguous stimuli, but only mildly, in keeping with most present-day accounts. We discuss potential explanations for the discrepancy with the earlier work.
当面对模棱两可的视觉输入时，观察者可能会对同一输入产生各种不同的感知解释。事实上，这种输入会导致感知在时间上不可预测地在解释之间切换。这种所谓的多稳定感知的理论大致分为两类：强调依赖于知识等高级认知因素的自上而下的理论，以及表明视觉系统中适应等较低阶信息处理方面更重要参与的自下而上的理论。目前大多数解释认为这两个因素都起作用，因此由于适应等因素，感知反转不可避免，但可以通过高级认知影响延迟或加速。我们重新审视了一组表明感知反转的发生极大地取决于观察者对输入确实模棱两可的知识的工作：如果没有这种知识，该工作中的许多观察者没有经历任何反转，这与反转是不可避免的观点明显冲突。我们使用了一个允许受试者在没有意识到歧义的情况下报告感知反转的模棱两可的动画。我们发现，意识到动画歧义的受试者比不知情的受试者报告的感知反转略多，但这种组间差异很小，并且被每组内观察者之间的可变性所掩盖。这些发现表明，对歧义的了解可以影响对歧义刺激的感知，但只是适度的，这与目前大多数解释一致。我们讨论了与早期工作存在差异的潜在解释。
