Face, house binocular rivalry under central and eccentric viewing conditions. Perception, 40, ECVP 2011

Kay Laird Ritchie, Rachel Lynne Bannerman, Arash Sahraie

Research output: Contribution to conferencePoster

Abstract

The perceived dominance of percepts within a rival pair of images can be influenced by emotional content, with emotional images dominating over neutral images. Our first experiment investigated this effect in the periphery. Rival face (fearful or neutral) and house pairs subtending 5.2°×6.7° were viewed either centrally or with the near edge positioned 1° or 4° from the fixation. Both fearful and neutral faces were perceived as dominant for significantly longer than houses, with fearful faces being dominant for significantly longer than neutral faces at all three eccentricities. In eccentric viewing, we sought to manipulate face dominance by placing an upright/inverted, face/house stable image at the same eccentricity, in the opposite hemifield. Faces in upright rival pairs dominated over houses, nevertheless, no face dominance was found in inverted rival pairs. There was no evidence that dominance of a percept in the periphery can be modulated by the presence of a secondary stimulus. In conclusion, our findings show that upright and not inverted face stimuli, and in particular fearful faces, continue to dominate perception in binocular rivalry even when viewed in the periphery; and that this dominance is not affected by the presence of other stable images.
Original languageEnglish
Pages180
Number of pages1
Publication statusPublished - 2011

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