Anisotropic Temporal Integration in the Perception of Stereoscopic Corrugations

Abstract

Disparity sensitivity for horizontal depth corrugations increases with exposure duration for presentations of up to 1 s (Tyler, 1990 Vision Research30 1877 – 1895). To extend the work of Parton et al (1996 Perception25 67) we investigated whether differences existed in the effects of exposure for corrugations at different orientations. Disparity thresholds were measured for horizontal, vertical, and diagonal gratings with spatial frequencies ranging between 0.1 cycle deg−1 and 0.8 cycle deg−1, as a function of stimulus duration. Stimuli were presented for exposures of between 50 ms and 32 s, and were followed by a random disparity mask, which served the important function of disrupting further processing of stimulus disparity. Thresholds were greatest for vertical gratings. This effect was particularly pronounced for the lowest frequencies. In all conditions, disparity sensitivity improved as exposure duration increased, and continued to do so for all durations tested. For vertical and diagonal gratings, log - log plots of threshold against time showed a linear relationship with a slope of −1 up to 1.0 s, after which time improvements in sensitivity reduced. Horizontal gratings showed a similar relationship, but with thresholds ceasing to decrease significantly after 0.5 s. Temporal integration limits differ with surface orientation, and represent another important difference in our ability to detect and encode depth in stereoscopic surfaces.