Judgements of time to contact are affected by rate of appearance of visible texture.
More fine-grained texture becomes visible if the distance between an observer and an object or surface is reduced. This article illustrates with a schematic example that the inverse rate of the relative appearance of visible texture provides information about time to contact if the observer has a constant visual acuity and the texture has a certain scale-independent structure. An experiment is reported in which texture appearance was manipulated. Participants were asked to make forced-choice time-to-contact judgements. A small but significant effect indicates that the judgements were affected by the rate of appearance of the texture. It is concluded that observers use this type of information.
Jacobs
David M
DM
Facultad de Psicologia, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. david.jacobs@uam.es
Díaz
Alex
A
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D017709:Fractals; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D013998:Time Perception; D014792:Visual Acuity; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult