Exploring sequential stereopsis for co-planarity tasks

We used the sequential stereopsis paradigm and apparatus described by Enright (Vision Research, 36, (1996) 307–312). The observer’s task was to set targets to equidistance in Experiments 1–3, and to make them co-planar in Experiment 4. However, it is argued that in all experiments observers exploited a co-planarity setting strategy. Sequential stereopsis produced good performance throughout in terms of low disparity thresholds when head position was varied by rotations around three axes: vertical (azimuth condition); horizontal (elevation); and midline (tilt). It also produced good performance when the targets were shifted in position so that they both lay on one side of the median plane of the head. These results cannot be accounted for by Enright’s isovergence hypothesis unless it is extended to incorporate other information about eye positions. Performance was better but not greatly so in control simultaneous stereopsis conditions, nor did it deteriorate much when the observer’s view was restricted solely to the targets by removing visibility of the room in which the apparatus was located. Target settings were typically located on a concave arc centred on the median plane. This effect was quantitatively modelled using disparity correction for a relief task of co-planarity (Ga°rding, Porrill, Mayhew, & Frisby. Vision Research, 35 (1995) 703–722). This modelling indicated over-estimations of c.10–20 cm in fixation distance for target distances in the range 71.5–112.5 cm.