When faced with ambiguous visual input, an observer may have various perceptual interpretations even when the input remains unchanged. Indeed, such ambiguous displays can cause the observer to experience distinct perceptual interpretations in turn, unpredictably switching between them over time. Theories of such so-called multistable perception broadly fall into two categories: top-down theories that hold that perception in these cases depends strongly on higher-level cognitive factors such as knowledge, and bottom-up theories which suggests more vital involvement of aspects of lower-order information processing such as local adaptation in the visual system. We evaluated whether the occurrence of perceptual reversals in the face of ambiguous input is related to the observer's knowledge that the input is, indeed, ambiguous. We used an ambiguous animation that was designed such that subjects could report perceptual reversals without realizing the ambiguity. Subjects observed the animation, reported their perception, and filled out a questionnaire that assessed their knowledge of the animation's ambiguity. We found that informed subjects reported slightly more perceptual switches than the other subjects, but that this between-group difference was very small compared to the lack of variability within each group between subjects who were aware of the ambiguity and those who were not. These findings suggests that knowledge of ambiguity can influence perception of ambiguous stimuli, but that this influence is relatively minor. This discrepancy between current findings and past work is discussed.
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