Effects of attention on visual experience during monocular rivalry

•Monocular rivalry is influenced by volitional attention.•Attended stimuli are seen for longer periods than unattended stimuli.•The effect persists whether a spatial region or feature is attended.

There is a long-running debate over the extent to which volitional attention can modulate the appearance of visual stimuli. Here we use monocular rivalry between afterimages to explore the effects of attention on the contents of visual experience. In three experiments, we demonstrate that attended afterimages are seen for longer periods, on average, than unattended afterimages. This occurs both when a feature of the afterimage is attended directly and when a frame surrounding the afterimage is attended. The results of these experiments show that volitional attention can dramatically influence the contents of visual experience.