Difference in Perceived Depth between Two Stereo-overlapping and Three Stereo-overlapping Planes

Abstract

We examined the perceived depth of stereo-overlapping planes and found that, when disparity of the outer two planes of three overlapping planes was the same as that of the two overlapping planes, its depth magnitude for the three planes differed from that for the two planes in some conditions. In Experiment 1, the perceived depth magnitude reproduced by 10 observers for the three planes was smaller than that for the two planes for each of the disparities used (6.28’, 9.43’, and 18.86’). In Experiment 2, the depth discrimination performed by 5 observers showed that the perceived depth of the two planes was smaller than that of the three planes for the smallest disparity used (6.28’) and was the same as that of the three planes for the middle or largest disparity used (9.43’ or 18.86’). Several theoretical implications of the results were discussed.