Effects of Visual Angle on Perspective Reversal for Ambiguous Patterns

Abstract

Reversal rates of an ambiguous figure (the Necker cube) were studied for different pattern sizes covering a range of visual angles θ from ∼1 to 62 deg. A large number of reversals was obtained for each observer and each pattern in order to examine the statistical distributions of reversal times. A pronounced flattening of the statistical distributions (represented throughout by a gamma distribution) and a growth of the mean duration of each percept, with increasing pattern size was found. A plateau in the range of θ between 5 and 20–30 deg was observed. For larger values of θ two kinds of observers have been identified: for ‘fast’ observers the inversion rate is little affected by θ, whilst for ‘slow’ observers, the mean reversal time increases strongly with θ. A tentative model, based on three different contributions to the duration of the alternation process, is proposed: a constant term, independent of θ, and two terms dependent on θ—a retinal term, and a cortical one. The last term is interpreted as due to the spreading of excitation with the characteristic of a filling-in process.