TRAMES 4, 6, 2002

BINOCULAR RIVALRY AS A FUNCTION OF SPATIAL QUANTISATION OF THE IMAGES OF FACES: PRECATEGORICAL LEVEL CONTROLS IT

Talis Bachmann* and Laura Leigh-Pemberton**

*Institute of Law, University of Tartu
**University of Portsmouth

Abstract. Spatially quantised images of human faces, dichoptically paired with their nonquantised original versions were presented to produce binocular rivalry. It was found that the relative stimulus dominance in rivalry was a monotonically increasing function of the coarseness of quantisation. Whereas all rivalrous stimuli (1) were derived from the original images that belonged to invariant perceptual object category and had invariant exemplar identity, (2) had equal and invariant overall luminance, and (3) were characterised by the invariant set of (vertical and horizontal) contour orientations of the edges of elements of the quantised images then the main determinants of dominance in rivalry should be related to the differences in spatial frequency content and/or wholistic pattern configuration of the rivalrous stimuli. Whereas the meaningfulness and ease of interpretation (face-like quality) of the image decreases with coarseness of quantisation then the concomitant increase in rivalry dominance must not depend on high-level categorical or identity processing but on some intermediate-level processes where the physical-configurational (Gestalt-) description of the image is sought for.

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