When perceptual time stands still: Long stable memory in binocular rivalry

Abstract

We have carried out binocular rivalry experiments with a large number of subjects to obtain high quality statistics on probability distribution of dominance duration (PDDD) for two cases where (a) the rival stimulus is continuously presented and (b) the rival stimulus is periodically removed, with stimulus-on and stimulus-off intervals Ton and Toff respectively. It is shown that the PDDD obtained for the latter case can be reproduced to a reasonable degree of approximation by simply using the PDDD of part (a) and slicing it at pieces of time extent Ton and by introducing intervals of length Toff between the on-intervals where the PDDD is set to zero. This suggests that the variables representing the perceptual state do not change significantly during long blank intervals. We argue that these findings impose challenges to theoretical models which aim at describing visual perception.