Exogenously triggered perceptual switches in multistable structure-from-motion occur in the absence of visual awareness.

Here, we characterize the duration of exogenously triggered perceptual switches in an ambiguously rotating structure-from-motion display and demonstrate their independence on visual awareness. To this end, we triggered a perceptual reversal by inverting the on-screen motion and systematically varied the posttrigger presentation duration, while collecting observers' reports about the initial and final directions of illusory rotation. We demonstrate that for the structure-from-motion display, perceptual transitions are extremely brief (≤ 20 ms) and can be considered instantaneous from an experimental perspective.