Visual asymmetries for relative depth judgments in a three-dimensional space.
Our ability to process information about an object's location in depth varies along the horizontal and vertical axes. These variations reflect functional specialisation of the cerebral hemispheres as well as the ventral/dorsal visual streams for processing stimuli located in near and far space. Prior research has demonstrated visual field superiorities for processing near space in the lower and right hemispaces and for far space in the upper and left hemispaces. No research, however, has directly tested whether the functional specialisation of the visual fields actually makes objects look closer when presented in the lower or right visual fields. To measure biases in the perception of depth, we employed anaglyph stimuli where participants made closer/further judgments about the relative location of two spheres in a three-dimensional virtual space. We observed clear processing differences in this task where participants perceived the right and lower spheres to be closer and the left and upper spheres to be further away. Furthermore, no relationship between the horizontal and vertical dimensions was observed suggesting separate cognitive/neural mechanisms. Not only does this methodology clearly demonstrate differences in perceived depth across the visual field, it also opens up many possibilities for studying functional asymmetries in three-dimensional space.
['Szpak|Ancrêt|A|', 'Loetscher|Tobias|T|', 'Bastian|John|J|', 'Thomas|Nicole A|NA|', 'Nicholls|Michael E R|ME|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D001288:Attention D003867:Depth Perception D004192:Discrimination, Psychological D004215:Distance Perception D005260:Female D007839:Functional Laterality D006801:Humans D007600:Judgment D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D009949:Orientation D014794:Visual Fields D055815:Young Adult
Visual asymmetries Relative depth Anaglyphs Depth perception Three-dimensions