Abstract
It has recently been shown that action-percept congruency plays a role in binocular rivalry, a form of bistable perception that occurs when incompatible images are presented to the two eyes. Here, we investigated the degree to which smooth-pursuit eye movements can bias perceptual competition. In the first experiment, observers pursued a horizontally oscillating dot that was superimposed on rivalrous, leftward and rightward drifting gratings. Perceptual dominance was consistently biased in the direction of smooth-pursuit and tended to switch when pursuit direction switched. The strength of this relationship increased with speed, especially when the pursuit speed matched the grating speed. In a second experiment, we investigated the interaction between pursuit and intentional control on rivalry dynamics. Relative to non-volitional viewing, percept-pursuit coupling was weakened when observers were instructed to selectively maintain one percept or to mismatch their percept with pursuit. However, instructions to match percept with pursuit did not further increase the strength of coupling. Our results contribute to converging evidence that self-generated actions can influence perception. We have provided insight into how this affects binocular rivalry, by showing that percept-pursuit coupling can be suppressed at the observer's will.