The Role Of Attention In Ambiguous Figure Perception

The mechanism of visual perception can be more clearly explored by the investigation of ambiguous figures.Ambiguous figure usually defined as the figure that can be perceived as two or more interpretations.There are evidence suggest a hybrid model involves both bottom-up and top-down processes works for ambiguous figure perception.Different perception was perceived when the visual stimuli stays unchanged.What factor influences these two processes?The two characters of ambiguous figure are perceptual alternation and mutual exclusivity.Whether the two characters are influenced by sustained attention and selective attention worth further exploration.The current research focus on the role of attention in ambiguous figure perception and explore the underlie mechanism of ambiguous figure perception.The present study holds that an ambiguous figure can be recognized as two interpretations due to that it contains all the cues that needed to be recognized.Attention plays an important modulatory role in ambiguous figure perception.There are two cases may lead to reversal of ambiguous figure,one is fluctuation of attention which lead observers focus on different cues;the other is transformation of attention lead to change of perceptual information.Experiment 1 investigated how the perceptual of ambiguous figure changes when fluctuation of attention was influenced by intermittent presentation.Experiment 2 discussed how shift of attention influences ambiguous figure perception by leading observers focusing on different percept of ambiguous figure through different instructions.And discussed the relationship between cognitive control and perceptual reversal rate.Experiment 3 discussed how ambiguous figure perception is influenced by divided attention by introducing a secondary task and studied the influence of different cognitive load on ambiguous figure reversal when presented in different format.The conclusions are as follows:1.Ambiguous figure can be recognized as two interpretations due to that it contains all the cues that needed to be recognized.There are two cases influence reversal of ambiguous figure,one is fluctuation of attention,the other is transformation of attention.2.Ambiguous figure perception consumes attentional resources.Attention plays an important modulatory role in ambiguous figure perception and influences reversal and bias of ambiguous figure.On one hand,attention can modulate the stability of ambiguous figure perception.On the other,the perceived percept and its duration changes when attention shifts.