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Updated: Jun 4, 2026

How to Create and Use Binocular Rivalry
Published on: November 10, 2010
Scene congruency biases Binocular Rivalry
Liad Mudrik1, Leon Y Deouell, Dominique Lamy
1Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. liadmu@gmail.com
Abstract:
Contextual regularities, that is, objects' tendency to appear with certain other objects, facilitate the processing of visual scenes and confer contextually incongruent objects with a special attentional status. This study was aimed at investigating the mechanisms underlying this attentional advantage using Binocular Rivalry (BR). In two experiments, congruent and incongruent images (e.g., a man drinking from a glass vs. a man "drinking" from a hairbrush) were pitted against each other, yielding a version of BR in which two objects rival within a given scene. Incongruent objects predominated in awareness longer than congruent ones. This effect stemmed from the fact that their dominance epochs lasted longer on the average than those of congruent objects, suggesting a difficulty to disengage attention from such objects. On the other hand, no support was found for the notion that incongruent objects also attract attention.
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