Stereoscopic depth constancy depends on the subject's task.
Under identical viewing conditions, observers made two types of judgement about the shape of stereoscopically defined surfaces: one required an estimate of viewing distance for correct performance (e.g. setting the depth of a hemi-cylinder to equal its half-height or a dihedral angle to 90 deg), the other did not (matching the depth of, for example, sinusoidal corrugations or hemi-cylinders presented at two distances). Depth constancy for the two types of task was about 75% and 100%, respectively. We argue that observers may use a simple "direct" strategy to perform the depth matching task rather than constructing and comparing a metric representation of each surface.
Glennerster
A
A
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, U.K.
Rogers
B J
BJ
Bradshaw
M F
MF
D003290:Convergence, Ocular; D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004215:Distance Perception / Q000502:physiology; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011594:Psychometrics; D015357:Vision Disparity / Q000502:physiology