Eye movements and reversal rates of ambiguous patterns.

To study the influence of eye movements on the time course of perceptual alternation of ambiguous patterns, we recorded the reversal signals and eye movements of four subjects, during prolonged observations of a Necker cube, under three experimental conditions: unrestricted normal viewing, instruction-restricted normal viewing, and imperfectly stabilized viewing. An important decrease in the frequency of saccadic eye movements and a significant increase in the reversal rates were shown by all subjects under imperfectly stabilized viewing over the normal unrestricted viewing. Moreover, three out of four subjects showed a significant decrease in their reversal rates when changing from the normal to instruction-restricted viewing. Results are discussed in terms of the role and time cost of scanning eye movements in perceptual processes.