New Psychophysical Method for Visual Consciousness during Binocular Rivalry: Conventional Method for Binocular Rivalry Has a Fatal Flaw

Abstract

The alternation of dominance and suppression in a binocular-rivalry situation is involved closely in visual consciousness and unconsciousness. Therefore, binocular rivalry has recently been highlighted as a useful psychophysical phenomenon for the study of consciousness. However, we point out that the conventional method since Breese (1899) that rivalrous stimuli to the two eyes are presented simultaneously and for a long time has a fatal flaw for approaching the fundamental mechanisms underlying rivalry and, at the same time, our new method called “the suppression method” is, however, useful.