Cueing the interpretation of a Necker Cube: a way to inspect fundamental cognitive processes

Year: 2009

Authors: Arrighi R., Arecchi F.T., Farini A., Gheri C.

Autors Affiliation: Istituto Nazionale di Ottica Applicata (INOA), Largo E. Fermi 6, Florence, Italy; Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy

Abstract: The term perceptual bistability refers to all those conditions in which an observer looks at an ambiguous stimulus that can have two or more distinct but equally reliable interpretations. In this work, we investigate perception of Necker Cube in which bistability consists of the possibility to interpret the cube depth in two different ways. We manipulated the cube ambiguity by darkening one of the cube faces (cue) to provide a clear cube interpretation due to the occlusion depth index. When the position of the cue is stationary the cube perceived perspective is steady and driven by the cue position. However, when we alternated in time the cue position (i.e. we changed the position of the darkened cube face) two different perceptual phenomena occurred: for low frequencies the cube perspective alternated in line with the position of the cue; however for high frequencies the cue was no longer able to bias the perception but it appears as a floating feature traveling across the solid with the cube whole perspective that returns to be bistable as in the conventional, bias-free, case.

Journal/Review: COGNITIVE PROCESSING

Volume: 10      Pages from: S95  to: S99

KeyWords: adult; ambiguity; article; association; cognition; controlled study; experimental study; female; frequency analysis; human; human experiment; male; mathematical variable; necker cube; occlusion; perception; priority journal, Adult; Cognition; Cues; Female; Humans; Male; Photic Stimulation; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time; Space Perception; Vision, Binocular; Visual Perception; Young Adult
DOI: 10.1007/s10339-008-0244-9

Citations: 4
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