Spatial Structure
Studies are aimed at understanding the spatial perception, especially depth perception. How do people perceive the extrinsic properties of an object (such as its depth), and the intrinsic properties of the object (such as its orientation)? In both studies, I manipulate the monocular and binocular presentation of the target. Participants wear goggles and I control whether both eyes or only one eye is open.
For my most recent study, I developed a new experimental paradigm. The opening (or closing) of the left eye was triggered by the finger when it got close to the target (i.e. based on a relative disparity threshold). This allowed us to study the use of relative disparity information to control the final segment of pointing (the alignment of the finger with the target). We demonstrated that the online control depends on a continuous input of the most recent (i.e. concurrent) information of the position of the finger relative to the target. Others have argued that the online control may also be based on input from continuous proprioceptive information relative to estimates of the target’s visual position in space. But we find that people do not behave accordingly; closing the left eye when relative disparity information would have become available renders pointing inaccurate and similar to that when the whole pointing gesture would have been executed with just one eye.
| dnm | Bruggeman, H., Fantoni, Caudek, C., Domini, F. (2010). Reaching movement accuracy is mainly determined by visual online control, ECVP, Aug 2010. |
| ms | Bruggeman, H., Konczak, J. & Yonas, A. (2007). The processing of linear perspective and binocular information for action and perception Neuropsychologia, 45, 1420–1426. (PubMed) |