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PubMed2006

Slant perception, and its voluntary control, do not govern the slant aftereffect: multiple slant signals adapt independently.

Although it is known that high-level spatial attention affects adaptation for a variety of stimulus features (including binocular disparity), the influence of voluntary attentional control-and the associated awareness-on adaptation has remained unexplored. We developed an ambiguous surface slant adaptation stimulus with conflicting monocular and binocular slant signals that instigated two mutually exclusive surface percepts with opposite slants. Using intermittent stimulus removal, subjects were able to voluntarily select one of the two rivaling slant percepts for extended adaptation periods, enabling us to dissociate slant adaptation due to awareness from stimulus-induced slant adaptation. We found that slant aftereffects (SAE) for monocular and binocular test patterns had opposite signs when measured simultaneously. There was no significant influence of voluntarily controlled perceptual state during adaptation on SAEs of monocular or binocular signals. In addition, the magnitude of the binocular SAE did not correlate with the magnitude of perceived slant. Using adaptation to one slant cue, and testing with the other cue, we demonstrated that multiple slant signals adapt independently. We conclude that slant adaptation occurs before the level of slant awareness. Our findings place the site of stereoscopic slant adaptation after disparity and eye posture are interpreted for slant [as demonstrated by Berends et al. (Berends, E. M., Liu, B., & Schor, C. M. (2005). Stereo-slant adaptation is high level and does not involve disparity coding. Journal of Vision 5 (1), 71-80), using that disparity scales with distance], but before other slant signals are integrated for the resulting awareness of the presented slant stimulus.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed1984

[Pulfrich phenomenon].

A physiological and clinical study of the Pulfrich stereo-phenomenon was performed. The most important physiological parameters are object movements, luminous factors, and the position and movement of the eyes. Our experimental research emphasizes the retinal illumination factors, modified by many optical devices (pinhole, stenopeic slit, etc.); the paradoxical perceptive aspects of the Pulfrich phenomenon; and, above all, outlines the negligible role of the metric factors. The Pulfrich phenomenon is mainly time-dependent, and is defined as a stereoscopic illusion related to the temporal disparity between the visual input arising from the two eyes at the time of their cortical integration. In ocular pathology, 267 subjects were studied, the ocular abnormalities being divided into diseases of the pupil, cornea and vitreous body, cataracts, retina, optic nerve, glaucoma and strabismus. The difference between the spontaneous Pulfrich phenomenon and the provoked Pulfrich phenomenon is stressed: the spontaneous Pulfrich phenomenon is rare (14% of subjects); by itself it is anomalous and is a functional symptom his mechanism may vary according to the etiology; on the contrary, the provoked Pulfrich phenomenon is a normal phenomenon, induced by a filter in front of one eye; its absence is pathological either with the filter in front of the better eye, the bad eye, or of each in turn. In clinical practice this lack is frequent (46% of subjects), and is related to an alteration of binocular vision, but without etiological specificity.

Depth Perception↗
PubMed1989

Manipulating stereopsis and vergence in an outdoor setting: moon, sky and horizon.

A simple stimulus generator has been constructed that permits a small illuminated target to be seen with variable inter-ocular disparity, when superimposed upon the binocular view of an outdoor landscape. This device was applied to several questions involving perception of size, distance and orientation, with the following results: (1) when the apparent distance to an "artificial moon", as perceived through stereopsis, is decreased by about 50-fold (from near horizon to about 60 m), its apparent size is reduced by only a miniscule amount (8% on average); hence, the moon illusion is probably not due to compensation--conscious or subconscious--for its apparent distance; (2) those changes in apparent size known as convergence micropsia vary as a function of the visual surround; for a vergence change of 1 deg, greater perceived change in size of a small target arises when a landscape is seen nearby than with empty sky as surround; (3) when a target is shown somewhat above the horizon against an empty sky, it must be viewed with divergence of the visual axes (image positions for "hyper-infinite" distance), in order to be perceived as vertically above objects on the skyline; this effect implies a strong backward tilt to the apparent vertical and probably reflects an attempt to "null out" the perceptual consequences of the convergence that typically occurs during downward saccades.

Depth Perception↗
PubMed1999

Second-order processing of four-stroke apparent motion.

In four-stroke apparent motion displays, pattern elements oscillate between two adjacent positions and synchronously reverse in contrast, but appear to move unidirectionally. For example, if rightward shifts preserve contrast but leftward shifts reverse contrast, consistent rightward motion is seen. In conventional first-order displays, elements reverse in luminance contrast (e.g. light elements become dark, and vice-versa). The resulting perception can be explained by responses in elementary motion detectors turned to spatio-temporal orientation. Second-order motion displays contain texture-defined elements, and there is some evidence that they excite second-order motion detectors that extract spatio-temporal orientation following the application of a non-linear 'texture-grabbing' transform by the visual system. We generated a variety of second-order four-stroke displays, containing texture-contrast reversals instead of luminance contrast reversals, and used their effectiveness as a diagnostic test for the presence of various forms of non-linear transform in the second-order motion system. Displays containing only forward or only reversed phi motion sequences were also tested. Displays defined by variation in luminance, contrast, orientation, and size were effective. Displays defined by variation in motion, dynamism, and stereo were partially or wholly ineffective. Results obtained with contrast-reversing and four-stroke displays indicate that only relatively simple non-linear transforms (involving spatial filtering and rectification) are available during second-order energy-based motion analysis.

Contrast Sensitivity↗
PubMed1982

A computational theory of visual surface interpolation.

Computational theories of structure-from-motion and stereo vision only specify the computation of three-dimensional surface information at special points in the image. Yet the visual perception is clearly of complete surfaces. To account for this a computational theory of the interpolation of surfaces from visual information is presented. The problem is constrained by the fact that the surface must agree with the information from stereo or motion correspondence, and not vary radically between these points. Using the image irradiance equation, an explicit form of this surface consistency constraint can be derived. To determine which of two possible surfaces is more consistent with the surface consistency constraint, one must be able to compare the two surfaces. To do this, a functional from the space of possible functions to the real numbers is required. In this way, the surface most consistent with the visual information will be that which minimizes the functional. To ensure that the functional has a unique minimal surface, conditions on the form of the functional are derived. In particular, if the functional is a complete semi-norm that satisfies the parallelogram law, or the space of functions is a semi-Hilbert space and the functional is a semi-inner product, then there is a unique (to within possibly an element of the null space of the functional) surface that is most consistent with the visual information. It can be shown, based on the above conditions plus a condition of rotational symmetry, that there is a vector space of possible functionals that measure surface consistency, this vector space being spanned by the functional of quadratic variation and the functional of square Laplacian. Arguments based on the null spaces of the respective functionals are used to justify the choice of the quadratic variation as the optimal functional. Possible refinements to the theory, concerning the role of discontinuities in depth and the effects of applying the interpolation process to scenes containing more than one object, are discussed.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Errors in judging information about reflections in mirrors.

We investigated people's perception and knowledge of planar mirror reflections. People were accurate at deciding when they could first see their reflection as they approached a mirror from the side, but only if their reflection was visible. Most people stopped too early if the mirror was covered up. People also overestimated the size of the reflection of their face on the surface of a mirror if they were shown a covered mirror. Their accuracy improved somewhat if their reflection was visible but, unlike the first task, they still made striking errors. Perceptual feedback thus improved performance at predicting the behaviour of mirror reflections in both tasks but failed to eliminate errors in the second task. The overestimation of reflection size was not face-specific as it generalised to novel stimuli (paper ellipses) and it was found with both a matching response and for verbal size estimations. The early error in the first task appears to be due to an inaccurate belief that can be overridden by perceptual feedback. The overestimation in the second task is primarily caused by a powerful size-constancy effect.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Perception of three-dimensional angular rotation.

In three experiments, difference thresholds (dLs) and points of subjective equality (PSEs) for three-dimensional (3-D) rotation simulations were examined. In the first experiment, observers compared pairs of simulated spheres that rotated in polar projection and that differed in their structure (points plotted in the volume vs. on the surface), axis of rotation (vertical, y, vs. horizontal, x), and magnitude of rotation (20 degrees-70 degrees). DLs were lowest (7%) when points were on the surface and when at least one sphere rotated around the y-axis and varied with changes in the independent variables. PSEs were closest to objective equality when points were on the surface of both spheres and when both spheres rotated about the x-axis. In the second experiment, subjects provided direct estimates of the rotations of the same spheres. Results suggested a reasonable agreement between PSEs for the indirect-scaling and direct-estimate procedures. The third experiment varied sphere diameter (and therefore mean linear velocity of stimulus elements) and showed that although rotation judgments are biased by mean linear velocity, they are not likely to be made solely on the basis of that information. These and past results suggest a model whereby recovery of structure is conducted by low-level motion-detecting mechanisms, whereas rotation (and other) judgments are based on a higher level representation.

Acceleration↗
PubMed1999

Differential effects of shared attention on perception of heading and 3-D object motion.

When a person moves in a straight line through a stationary environment, the images of object surfaces move in a radial pattern away from a single point. This point, known as the focus of expansion (FOE), corresponds to the person's direction of motion. People judge their heading from image motion quite well in this situation. They perform most accurately when they can see the region around the FOE, which contains the most useful information for this task. Furthermore, a large moving object in the scene has no effect on observer heading judgments unless it obscures the FOE. Therefore, observers may obtain the most accurate heading judgments by focusing their attention on the region around the FOE. However, in many situations (e.g., driving), the observer must pay attention to other moving objects in the scene (e.g., cars and pedestrians) to avoid collisions. These objects may be located far from the FOE in the visual field. We tested whether people can accurately judge their heading and the three-dimensional (3-D) motion of objects while paying attention to one or the other task. The results show that differential allocation of attention affects people's ability to judge 3-D object motion much more than it affects their ability to judge heading. This suggests that heading judgments are computed globally, whereas judgments about object motion may require more focused attention.

Attention↗
PubMed1989

Further experiments on the perception of growth in three dimensions.

Mark and Todd (1983) reported an experiment in which the cardioidal strain transformation was extended to three dimensions and applied to a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the head of a 15-year-old girl in a direction that made the transformed head appear younger to the vast majority of their subjects. The experiments reported here extend this research in order to examine whether subjects are indeed detecting cardioidal strain in three dimensions, rather than detecting changes in head slant or making 2-D comparisons of the shape of the occluding contour. Three-dimensional surfaces were obtained by measuring a real head manually (Experiment 1) and with a laser scanner (Experiment 2), and transformed to different age levels using the 3-D strain transformation described by Mark and Todd (1983). There were no statistically significant differences in the accuracy with which relative age judgments could be made in response to pairs of profiles, pairs of 3/4 views, or pairs of mixed views (profile plus 3/4 view), suggesting that subjects can indeed extract the cardioidal strain level of the head in three dimensions. However, an additional effect that emerged in these studies was that judgments were crucially affected by the instructions given to subjects, which suggests that factors other than cardioidal strain are important in making judgments about rich data structures.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Affine distortions of pictorial space: some predictions for Goldstein (1987) that La Gournerie (1859) might have made.

Goldstein (1987) studied the perception of pictures seen from the front and the side. Several distinctions arose from his results and analysis, but only one is central to the reanalysis presented here: The perceived orientation of objects within a picture with respect to the external world is a function of viewer position in front of the picture. For example, the eyes of a portrait subject appear to follow an observer who moves around a gallery. Viewed from many positions, such objects can be said to rotate, following a mobile viewer. Goldstein called this the differential rotation effect because those objects that point directly out of the picture (at 90 degrees) rotate most; those pointing at other angles rotate in decreasing amounts. Goldstein offered no theoretical model and little in the way of explanation for this effect. This Observation offers a model based on the affine geometry and the analyses of La Gournerie (1859). This analysis transforms pictorial space (the space behind a photograph or representational picture) by shears, compressions, and dilations according to the viewpoint of the observer in relation to the composition point of the picture. These effects account for Goldstein's differential rotation effect quite well.

Depth Perception↗
PubMed1995

Two-dimensional constraints on three-dimensional structure from motion tasks.

Can humans recover metric structure from motion sequences or, as has been claimed by Todd and Bressan [(1990) Perception & Psychophysics, 48, 419-430], are they limited to recovering only relief structure? Two experiments were carried out to investigate this question. In a metric-structure task, the angular thresholds for discriminating two rotating bi-planar structures were approximately 91 deg. By contrast, in a relief-structure task, the angular thresholds for discriminating a planar from a non-planar structure, both undergoing simple rotational motion, were only approximately 11 deg. A computational model is proposed to examine the image motion sensitivity required to perform discriminations of both three-dimensional metric and relief structure from motion. When the experimental data were re-plotted in terms of this two-dimensional sensitivity, the thresholds were found to be the same for both tasks. This finding is related to the model's revelation that recovering metric structure from motion is inherently more noise-sensitive than is recovering relief structure from motion. The conclusion is that the differences in angular thresholds reflect the differing nature of the two tasks. There is no evidence that the visual processes themselves are preferentially sensitive to non-metric over metric structure from motion.

Depth Perception↗
PubMed2000

Perceptual alternation in obsessive compulsive disorder--implications for a role of the cortico-striatal circuitry in mediating awareness.

Mounting evidence suggests that obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) results from functional aberrations of the fronto-striatal circuitry. However, empirical studies of the behavioral manifestations of OCD have been relatively lacking. The present study employs a behavioral task that allows a quantitative measure of how alternative percepts are formed from one moment to another, a process mimicking the brain state in which different thoughts and imageries compete for access to awareness. Eighteen patients with OCD, 12 with generalized anxiety disorder, and 18 normal subjects participated in the experiment, in which they viewed one of the three Schröder staircases and responded by pressing a key to each perceptual reversal. The results demonstrate that the patients with OCD have a higher perceptual alternation rate than the normal controls. Moreover, the frequency of perceptual alternation is significantly correlated with the Yale-Brown obsessive compulsive and the Hamilton anxiety scores. The increase in the frequency of perceptual reversals cannot easily be accounted for by learning or by different patterns of eye fixations on the task. These results provide further evidence that an impairment of the inhibitory function of the cortico-striatal circuitry might underlie the etiology of OCD. The implications of the results for a general role of the cortico-striatal circuitry in mediating awareness are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Perception of 3D surface orientation from skew symmetry.

In this paper, we investigate how symmetry can be used to perceive 3D surface orientation. When a symmetric planar object is viewed from an angle, the projected contour has skew symmetry, which provides partial information about the 3D orientation of the object. For a given skew symmetry, this information can be characterized by a constraint curve of possible slant/tilt combinations that are consistent with a mirror-symmetric interpretation. These constraint curves move around when an object is rotated within a plane, and depend on what we will term the spin of the object: the angle between its axis of symmetry and the direction of tilt. To test the influence of symmetry constraint curves, we presented subjects with stereo images of symmetric objects that varied in spin, and had them perform an orientation-matching task. We found that the judgments showed biases that depended on the spin of the objects. Since other sources of information depend only on slant and tilt, not on spin, the biases imply that skew symmetry contributed to subjects' judgments. In a second experiment, we introduced conflicts between stereo and symmetry cues, and found that the spin-dependent biases can be modulated by selectively changing stereo slant. We propose an explanation of these results involving the optimal integration of stereo and skew symmetry, and present a Bayesian model that can account for the pattern of biases.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2004

Binocular fusion/suppression to spatial frequency differences at the border of areas 17/18 of the cat.

As shown by various human psychophysical studies, interocular spatial frequency disparities can yield a variety of percepts. In order to examine how binocular fusion is affected by spatial frequency differences, we have recorded cells in the border region of areas 17/18 of anesthetized cats. The optic axes of the eyes were deviated onto cathode-ray screens, and the optimal spatial frequency of each eye was assessed by monocular stimulations using drifting sinusoidal gratings. The optimal relative phase using identical spatial frequencies in both eyes was first determined. Spatial frequency differences were then introduced by keeping the optimal spatial frequency constant in one eye and varying the spatial frequency in the other. Results indicate that cells (39%) responded with an increased firing rate (facilitation) to similar spatial frequencies in each eye and with a gradual attenuation (occlusion or suppression) when spatial frequency differences were increased. However, binocular facilitation did not always occur to the presentation of identical stimuli. For 16% of the cells, maximal responses were observed when lower spatial frequencies than the optimal one were presented in one eye while higher spatial frequencies produced suppression. The opposite pattern was observed only for two cells. These findings are discussed in terms of binocular fusion and suppression.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

A dynamic model for anomalous figures: the shape of line-induced brightness modifications.

It is recognized that a fundamental role in the perception of anomalous figures is played by the intensity and shape of brightness modifications induced by line ends. The aim of this work was to study the structure of these modifications experimentally, by using variously arranged dots as probes. It was thus assumed that dots can measure activations generated inside abrupt line ends. The results show distribution of activation which differs according to dot distance and angle with respect to the continuation of the line near its end. These data do not agree with the predictions of information processing models in the literature on anomalous figures, which are based on perceptually postulated figures accounting for unlikely gaps. However, they do agree with the dynamic model proposed here, which is based on the idea that certain figure characteristics, eg the differential brightness of anomalous figures, depend on activation distribution which in turn depends on the organization of the forces in play. This idea is rooted in Gestalt theory. Another model supported by our experimental data is Grossberg's neural dynamic approach. In this case too, the basic idea is that of activation distribution which depends on the interaction of complex neural networks functioning according to special algorithms.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

Pictorial perspective: perception of size, linear, and texture perspective in children and adults.

Perception of size, linear, and texture perspective was investigated in third-grade and sixth-grade children and in college adults in three separate studies. A matching task required the observer to choose from a set of four alternative real scenes the correct match for the test stimulus, which was either a picture or a real scene. Correct performance required that the subject utilize perspective information for both size and distance distance relations. Erroneous choices available to the subject indicated errors in size judgement, in distance judgment, or in both simultaneously. View was either restricted at the correct station point or was free, with head motion. There were no significant effects of grade level. For all three groups, mean percent correct was nearly 100% with the real-scene test stimuli, and significantly below the chance level with the picture test stimuli. Errors in size judgment occurred most frequently, indicating that the geometrically correct rate of perspective convergence was too rapid to be seen by the subjects as perceptually acceptable. With size-perspective information alone, the number of size plus distance errors also increased significantly. There was no significant effect of viewing condition.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

From geons to structure. A note on object representation.

Two models of object perception are compared: recognition by components (RBC), proposed by Biederman, and structural information theory (SIT), initially proposed by Leeuwenberg. According to RBC a complex object is decomposed into predefined elementary objects, called geons. According to SIT, the decomposition is guided by regularities in the object. It is assumed that the simplest of all possible interpretations of any object is perceptually preferred. The comparison deals with two aspects of the models. One is the representation of simple objects--various definitions of object axes are considered. It is shown that the more these definitions account for object regularity and thus the more they agree with SIT, the better the object representations predict object classification. Another topic concerns assumptions underlying the models: the identification of geons is mediated by cues which are supposed to be invariant under varying viewpoints of objects. It is argued that such cues are not based on this invariance but on the regularity of actual objects. The latter conclusion is in line with SIT. An advantage of RBC, however, is that it deals with the perceptual process from stimulus to interpretation, whereas SIT merely concerns the outcome of the process, not the process itself.

Attention↗
PubMed2006

Effect of aging on stereoscopic interocular correlation.

PURPOSE: This study was designed to evaluate the minimum interocular correlation (IOC) needed by the visual system to correctly perceive a static stereoscopic stimulus as a function of normal aging. It was also our goal to evaluate the feasibility of clinical charts testing this aspect of visual perception. METHODS: Stereoscopic IOC threshold was determined in 100 normal observers (average age +/- standard deviation, 45.7 +/- 20.4 years) drawn from a clinical population between the ages of 10 and 85. We used partially correlated red-green random dot stereograms (RDS) displaying flat, square surfaces at 360 arcsec of either crossed or uncrossed disparity. RESULTS: Older observers needed a higher binocular correlation to perceive the stereoscopic stimuli when compared with the younger groups. There is a slight increase in the threshold value of the individuals in the 45- to 64-year-old group and a further effect on the observers over 65 years of age. Data did not reveal any effects of gender, near point phoria, or fixation disparity on IOC thresholds. CONCLUSIONS: Normal aging produces a statistically significant deficit in binocular correlation processing. This process is marginally correlated with stereo acuity measures even when stereoacuity floor effects are factored out. Although further experiments directly comparing stereoacuity and IOC are necessary and more refining is required to obtain optimum parameters, clinical stereoscopic IOC test charts appear feasible and may not assess the same processes as stereoacuity charts.

Adolescent↗