Multistable perception across modalities: Resolving sensory ambiguity in vision and audition

跨模式的多稳态感知：解决视觉和听觉中的感官模糊性

• 批准号: 325414673
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Alexandra Bendixen
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Professur Struktur und Funktion kognitiver Systeme
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/325414673?language=en
• 关键词: Multistable; perception; across; modalities; Resolving

Human sensory systems are continuously confronted with ambiguous information - yet perceptual experience is usually stable, unique and unambiguous. A promising approach to understand the formation of unambiguous percepts from ambiguous sensory evidence is to challenge this process experimentally by inducing perceptual multistability. In multistability, a stimulus evokes distinct perceptual experiences that alternate over time without a corresponding change in sensory evidence. Multistable phenomena have been described in most sensory modalities. In vision, multistability is typically used synonymously to rivalry, reflecting competition between perceptual interpretations. Examples include Necker's cube, Rubin's vase/face reversal, dynamic stimuli (e.g., apparent motion), and binocular rivalry, where the two eyes are presented with conflicting stimuli. In audition, multistability is studied with sequences of tones that are alternatingly perceived as bound or unbound, and with verbal transformations where the repetitive presentation of the same word induces the perception of rearrangements (e.g., life/fly). Given the scientific interest in multistability in either modality, the respective research fields are surprisingly segregated, and some effects well-known in one field are mostly ignored in the other. This is even more remarkable as in both fields there is considerable debate as to whether a common process is involved in various forms of multistability, and such a process would predict links between modalities beyond those observed so far. To overcome this gap between auditory and visual multistability, the present proposal brings together expertise from both fields. Besides the transfer of knowledge, specific multimodal paradigms will be developed that allow simultaneous measurement of auditory and visual multistability without response bias or interference. This possibility to assess several multistable effects at the same time also allows for assessing the role of intra-individual fluctuations. Well-established concepts from one modality will be tested in the other (e.g., predictability, multistable object formation, volitional control). Concepts or paradigms for which results in the two modalities appear to be in conflict (e.g., interruption of stimulus presentation, sequences for stimuli with more than two interpretations) will be systematically compared by matching the respective designs as closely as possible. As main results, we expect a better understanding of multistability in either modality, a joint framework that addresses common principles - and possibly common processes - across modalities, and a separation of modality-specific from modality-general factors. Since multistability is the model case for perceptual organization at constant sensory evidence, the results will also broaden our understanding as to how higher-level (cognitive) factors shape the organization of human perception beyond modality-specific accounts.

人类的感觉系统不断地面对模糊的信息--然而知觉体验通常是稳定的、独特的和明确的。从模糊的感觉证据中理解明确知觉的形成是一种很有前途的方法，那就是通过诱导知觉的多稳定性来对这一过程进行实验挑战。在多重稳定性中，刺激唤起不同的知觉体验，随着时间的推移而交替，而感觉证据没有相应的变化。在大多数感觉模式中都描述了多稳态现象。在视觉上，多重稳定性通常被用作竞争的同义词，反映了感知解释之间的竞争。例如内克魔方、鲁宾的花瓶/脸反转、动态刺激(例如，表观运动)和双眼竞争，其中两只眼睛被呈现为相互冲突的刺激。在试听中，多重稳定性是通过交替感知为约束或非约束的音调序列来研究的，以及通过语言转换来研究的，其中相同单词的重复呈现诱导了对重排的感知(例如，生活/飞行)。考虑到在这两种模式中对多稳定性的科学兴趣，各自的研究领域令人惊讶地分离，而在一个领域中众所周知的一些影响在另一个领域中大多被忽视。这一点更值得注意，因为在这两个领域，关于各种形式的多重稳定是否涉及一个共同进程，存在着相当大的争论，这种进程将预测模式之间的联系，而不是迄今观察到的模式之间的联系。为了克服听觉和视觉多稳定性之间的差距，本提案汇集了这两个领域的专业知识。除了知识转让外，还将开发特定的多模式范例，允许同时测量听觉和视觉的多稳定性，而不会出现反应偏差或干扰。这种同时评估几种多稳定效应的可能性也允许评估个体内部波动的作用。来自一种模式的成熟概念将在另一种模式中进行测试(例如，可预测性、多稳定目标形成、意志控制)。将通过尽可能接近地匹配各自的设计来系统地比较两种模式的结果似乎冲突的概念或范例(例如，刺激呈现的中断、具有两种以上解释的刺激序列)。作为主要成果，我们期望更好地了解这两种模式的多重稳定性，建立一个处理各种模式的共同原则--可能还有共同进程--的联合框架，并将特定于模式的因素与模式的一般因素分开。由于多稳定性是恒定感觉证据下知觉组织的模式案例，结果也将拓宽我们的理解，即更高水平的(认知)因素如何塑造人类知觉的组织，而不是特定于通道的描述。