The effects of pattern shape, subliminal stimulation, and voluntary control on multistable visual perception

Spontaneous figure reversal of ambiguous patterns was analyzed in humans. Voluntary control should intervene downward at a high-level processing, and should probably affect both a decision-making and a perception-stabilizing mechanism in the process of pattern’s unconscious interpretation. Results are confronted with other results on both perceptual and binocular rivalry of up-todate literature, in the frame of discussions on low-level bottom-up automatic stimulus-drived processing vs highlevel top-down covert attention-drived processing.