Abstract
Previous research has shown that emotional content can influence dominance duration in binocular rivalry, with the period of dominance for an emotional image (e.g. a fearful face) being significantly longer than a neutral image (e.g. a neutral face or a house). Furthermore, it has been found that the greater the foveal eccentricity of a rival pair of simple images, the slower the rate of rivalry. The current study combined these two findings to investigate the dominance of faces and the rate of rivalry in the periphery. Rival face (fearful or neutral) and house pairs subtending 5.2° × 6.7° were either viewed foveally, or the near edge of the stimuli was at 1× or at 4° eccentricity. While neutral faces dominated over houses in only the foveal condition, fearful faces dominated over houses in all three conditions. There was no effect of eccentricity on the rate of rivalry. These results provide support for the dominance of face stimuli over house stimuli, particularly for faces displaying fearful expressions.
This project was funded through a vacation scholarship awarded to K. Ritchie by the Wellcome Trust.