Evidence favouring both views is found in the literature.
According to 'perceptual interpretation', a rival target should not necessarily be yoked to the fate of the eye that views it. To test this prediction, we determined whether a rival target in one eye was compelled to obey the temporal dynamics of a second rival target imaged in that same eye. Superimposed on the variable-contrast grating was the image of a face, jittered over time to segregate it from the grating. Observers tracked rivalry between the two gratings or rivalry between the face and grating. As expected, predominance of the variable grating increased with the contrast.