Levelt’s laws do not predict perception when luminance- and contrast-modulated stimuli compete during binocular rivalry

Jan Skerswetat, Monika A. Formankiewicz, Sarah J. Waugh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Incompatible patterns viewed by each of the two eyes can provoke binocular rivalry, a competition of perception. Levelt’s first law predicts that a highly visible stimulus will predominate over a less visible stimulus during binocular rivalry. In a behavioural study, we made a counterintuitive observation: high visibility patterns do not always predominate over low visibility patterns. Our results show that none of Levelt’s binocular rivalry laws hold when luminance-modulated (LM) patterns compete with contrast-modulated (CM) patterns. We discuss visual saliency, asymmetric feedback, and a combination of both as potential mechanisms to explain the CM versus LM findings. Competing orthogonal LM stimuli do follow Levelt’s laws, whereas only the first two laws hold for competing CM stimuli. The current results provide strong psychophysical evidence for the existence of separate processing stages for LM and CM stimuli.

Original languageEnglish
Article number14432
Number of pages11
JournalScientific Reports
Volume8
Issue number1
Early online date26 Sep 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2018
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Levelt’s laws do not predict perception when luminance- and contrast-modulated stimuli compete during binocular rivalry'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this