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The effect of pictorial depth information on projected size judgements

Abstract

When full depth cues are available, size judgements are dominated by physical size. However, with reduced depth cues, size judgements are less influenced by physical size and more influenced by projected size. This study reduces depth cues further than previous size judgement studies, by manipulating monocularly presented pictorial depth cues only. Participants were monocularly presented with two shapes against a background of zero (control), one, two or three pictorial depth cues. Each cue was added progressively in the following order: height in the visual field, linear perspective, and texture gradient. Participants made a „same-different? judgement regarding the projected size of the two shapes, i.e. ignoring any depth cues. As expected, accuracy increased and response times decreased as the ratio between the projected size of the two shapes increased (range of projected size ratios, 1:1 to 1:5). In addition, with the exception of the larger size ratios (1:4 and 1:5), detection of projected size difference was poorer as depth cues were added. One-cue and two-cue conditions had the most weighting in this performance decrement, with little weighting from the three-cue condition. We conclude that even minimal depth information is difficult to inhibit. This indicates that depth perception requires little focussed attention

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