The effect of fear in the periphery in binocular rivalry

The perceived dominance of percepts within a rival pair of images can be influenced byemotional content, with emotional images dominating over neutral images. We investigated thiseffect in the periphery. Rival gratings and (fearful or neutral) face/house pairs were viewed centrallyand with the near edge positioned 1degree and 4degrees from the fixation. Both fearful and neutral faceswere perceived as dominant for significantly longer than houses, with fearful faces dominatingfor significantly longer than neutral faces at all three eccentricities. There was no differencebetween dominances at 18 and 48 eccentricity, and there was no difference in the dominance ofthe gratings at any eccentricity. Our findings show that face stimuli, and in particular fearfulfaces, continue to dominate perception in binocular rivalry even when viewed in the periphery.