Abstract
Binocular rivalry occurs when conflicting visual information is presented to two eyes, whereby the percept in one eye is said to "rival" the percept in the other eye. In continuous suppression paradigm, one of the percepts (mask) is intentionally made more salient than the stimulus of interest presented to the other eye. However, the classical continuous flash suppression (CFS mask) appears to be less effective in suppressing continuous motion, while the more effective dynamic mask was found to be feature-selective, i.e., matching the speed of the mask elements to the speed of the stimulus led to best suppression (Moors, Wagemans, de-Wit, 2014). Contrary to the latter finding, the results of the present study indicate that dynamic suppression may be primarily salience-based rather than feature-selective. More specifically, the effectiveness of suppression was contingent upon the paradigm used: when potential confounds, such as discontinuity of motion, were eliminated, the faster moving masks lead to more effective suppression, suggesting that dynamic suppression is primarily driven by the salience of the mask. This was confirmed in both 2D and 3D paradigms. The implications of these findings for models of suppression (how stimuli rival for consciousness), as well as feature-specific contributions, are discussed.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016