Department of Psychology and Institute for Mind and Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
J Vis. 2022 Oct 4;22(11):12. doi: 10.1167/jov.22.11.12.
Ambiguity is implicit in neural representations of the physical world. Previous work has examined how the visual system resolves ambiguous neural signals that represent various features, such as the percept resulting from rivalrous chromaticities or forms. Relatively little is known, however, about the contribution of unambiguous neural representations to perceptual resolution of ambiguous ones. This is addressed here by measuring perceptual resolution of ambiguity by grouping, which is operationalized as the tendency for multiple similar ambiguous representations to be seen as identical to each other. Multiple chromatically ambiguous representations were created using interocular switch rivalry and presented together with a nearby but separate unambiguous (non-rivalrous) chromaticity. The magnitude of grouping the chromatic regions was compared when ambiguous regions were seen alone versus with unambiguous regions seen simultaneously. Contrary to prevailing theory that the resolution of the ambiguous percepts would follow the unambiguous ones, the ambiguous chromatic regions consistently appeared identical to each other, but their appearance was not found to be attracted to the unambiguous color percept. This supports the proposition that the ambiguity itself in a neural representation is a linking feature contributing to perceptual disambiguation.
神经对物理世界的表示中存在模糊性。先前的研究已经研究了视觉系统如何解决代表各种特征的模糊神经信号，例如来自竞争色觉或形状的感知。然而，对于明确的神经表示对模糊感知的分辨率的贡献，人们知之甚少。通过群组来衡量感知的模糊分辨率，这是通过操作多个相似的模糊表示彼此相同的趋势来实现的。使用眼间切换竞争来创建多个色觉上的模糊表示，并与附近但单独的明确（非竞争）色觉一起呈现。当单独看到模糊区域与同时看到明确区域时，比较了对色觉区域进行分组的程度。与普遍的理论相反，即模糊感知的分辨率将跟随明确的感知，模糊的色觉区域始终彼此相同，但没有发现它们的外观被明确的颜色感知所吸引。这支持了这样的主张，即神经表示中的模糊性本身就是一种链接特征，有助于感知去模糊。
