The Influence of monocular regions on the binocular perception of spatial layout

Early observations by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1508) noted that the two eyes can see different parts of the background at the edges of occluding surfaces. This is illustrated in Leonardo’s drawing (Figure 3.1) and for two cases in Figure 3.2. In Figure 3.2a, an occluder hides the dotted region of background from both eyes, but there is a region on the right which only the right eye can see and a region on the left which only the left eye can see. Figure 3.2b shows a similar effect of looking through an aperture. In this case, a region on the left of the background seen through the aperture is visible to the right eye and vice versa. It is only since the early 1990s or so that there has been any serious investigation of the perceptual effects of such monocular occlusions, and a whole new set of binocular phenomena, involving the interaction of binocular and monocular elements in determining spatial layout, have been demonstrated and investigated (Harris and Wilcox, 2009). In this chapter, I shall concentrate on four novel phenomena that exemplify different ways in which unpaired regions influence binocular spatial layout.

[1]  P. Panum.  Physiologische Untersuchungen über das Sehen mit zwei Augen , 1858 .

[2]  C. Tyler,et al.  Bayesian adaptive estimation of psychometric slope and threshold , 1999, Vision Research.

[3]  Michael J Pianta,et al.  Paired and unpaired features can be equally effective in human depth perception , 2003, Vision Research.

[4]  Michael Cook,et al.  Depth of monocular elements in a binocular scene: the conditions for da Vinci stereopsis. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[5]  Hiroshi Ono,et al.  Content and context of monocular regions determine perceived depth in random dot, unpaired background and phantom stereograms , 2002, Vision Research.

[6]  H. Ono,et al.  A long-distance stereoscopic detector for partially occluding surfaces , 2006, Vision Research.

[7]  S. Nakamizo,et al.  Depth scaling in phantom and monocular gap stereograms using absolute distance information , 2006, Vision Research.

[8]  Jukka Häkkinen,et al.  Phantom surface captures stereopsis , 2001, Vision Research.

[9]  Hiroshi Ono,et al.  Greater depth seen with phantom stereopsis is coded at the early stages of visual processing , 2005, Vision Research.

[10]  Ken Nakayama,et al.  Quantitative depth for a phantom surface can be based on cyclopean occlusion cues alone , 1999, Vision Research.

[11]  Ning Qian,et al.  Solving da Vinci stereopsis with depth-edge-selective V2 cells , 2007, Vision Research.

[12]  Lei Liu,et al.  Quantitative stereoscopic depth without binocular correspondence , 1994, Nature.

[13]  Barton L. Anderson,et al.  The role of partial occlusion in stereopsis , 1994, Nature.

[14]  Martin Kaye,et al.  Stereopsis without binocular correlation , 1978, Vision Research.

[15]  Barbara J Gillam,et al.  Monocular gap stereopsis: manipulation of the outer edge disparity and the shape of the gap , 2003, Vision Research.

[16]  S. Grossberg,et al.  A laminar cortical model of stereopsis and three-dimensional surface perception , 2003, Vision Research.

[17]  C. Schor,et al.  Binocular Matching of Dissimilar Features in Phantom Stereopsis , 1997, Vision Research.

[18]  Philip M. Grove,et al.  Slant or occlusion: global factors resolve stereoscopic ambiguity in sets of horizontal lines , 2004, Vision Research.

[19]  G. Nyman,et al.  Occlusion Constraints and Stereoscopic Slant , 1997, Perception.

[20]  Michael Cook,et al.  Monocular Discs in the Occlusion Zones of Binocular Surfaces Do Not Have Quantitative Depth—A Comparison with Panum's Limiting Case , 2003, Perception.

[21]  Barbara Gillam.  Matching needed for stereopsis , 1995, Nature.

[22]  Shinsuke Shimojo,et al.  Da vinci stereopsis: Depth and subjective occluding contours from unpaired image points , 1990, Vision Research.