Alternative female and male developmental trajectories in the dynamic balance of human visual perception

Abstract

The numerous multistable phenomena in vision, hearing and touch attest that the inner workings of perception are prone to instability. We investigated a visual example—binocular rivalry—with an accurate no-report paradigm, and uncovered developmental and maturational lifespan trajectories that were specific for age and sex. To interpret these trajectories, we hypothesized that conflicting objectives of visual perception—such as stability of appearance, sensitivity to visual detail, and exploration of fundamental alternatives—change in relative importance over the lifespan. Computational modelling of our empirical results allowed us to estimate this putative development of stability, sensitivity, and exploration over the lifespan. Our results confirmed prior findings of developmental psychology and appear to quantify important aspects of neurocognitive phenotype. Additionally, we report atypical function of binocular rivalry in autism spectrum disorder and borderline personality disorder. Our computational approach offers new ways of quantifying neurocognitive phenotypes both in development and in dysfunction.