The temporal course of suppression during binocular rivalry

Orthogonally oriented sinusoidal luminance gratings were dichoptically presented to the observers' left and right eyes. During the subsequent binocular rivalry, a small target was briefly presented (4AFC) to probe the strength of interocular suppression at various temporal latencies. Both stationary and moving rivalrous patterns were investigated. The purpose of experiment 1 was to compare the temporal characteristics of stationary and motion rivalry (0 and 1.2 deg s-1), while that of experiment 2 was to examine rivalry suppression for higher speeds (2 and 4 deg s-1). In all cases, it was found that the strength of suppression remained essentially constant throughout a single phase of binocular rivalry. The results of the investigation also revealed that moving rivalrous patterns lead to greater magnitudes of interocular suppression than static patterns. Despite these differences in the strength of suppression, the results of both experiments show that the temporal characteristics of motion and static rivalry are essentially identical.