SPATIAL STRUCTURE PERCEPTION IN CHANGING OPTICAL PATTERN

视觉的主要功能是提供有关 环境的几何结构--关于三维形状，位置， 物体的运动以及观察者的位置和运动。 对这一环境结构进行精确和全球一致的衡量 从改变空间分布的刺激模式获得， 在时间上覆盖两个视网膜表面。 这个基本的视觉成就 然而，人们对它的了解仍然很少。 一个中心的经验和理论 问题是指定视觉检测的几何特性， 携带环境结构的信息。 分析 空间视觉背后的生理过程取决于 理解视觉与之的特定几何关系， 敏感 本研究项目的目的是确定几何 在空间和时间上变化的刺激模式的关系， 允许精确和全球一致的空间歧视 结构 具体目标是量化人类观察者的敏锐度 在变化中区分局部和全局空间关系， 刺激模式 拟议的实验集中在刺激模式， 二维图像的局部空间结构由于运动而改变 并涉及立体投影。 战略是评估 视觉敏锐度的空间关系是内在的几何 结构的刺激模式与那些基于视网膜 岗位 光刺激模式由点和线段组成 在计算机控制下的阴极射线管显示器上， 的空间和时间参数的模式。 人类观察者 区分几何结构略有不同的图案。 视觉 绩效是通过心理测量函数来衡量的， 识别精度达到几何变量的大小， 提供增益和阈值的单独测量，以获得视觉 关于特定几何变量的信息。

The principal function of vision is to provide information about the geometrical structure of the environment--about the 3-D shapes, locations, and motions of objects and about the location and motion of the observer. Precise and globally consistent measures of this environmental structure are obtained from changing stimulus patterns distributed both spatially and temporally over two retinal surfaces. This basic visual achievement remains poorly understood, however. A central empirical and theoretical problem is to specify the visually detected geometrical properties that carry information about environmental structure. Analysis of the physiological processes underlying spatial vision depends on an understanding of the specific geometric relationships to which vision is sensitive. The objective of this research project is to identify the geometric relationships in spatially and temporally varying stimulus patterns that permit precise and globally consistent discriminations of spatial structure. The specific aim is to quantify the acuities of human observers in discriminating both local and global spatial relations in changing stimulus patterns. The proposed experiments focus on stimulus patterns in which the local spatial structure of 2-D images is changing due to motion in 3-D space and to stereoscopic projection. The strategy is to evaluate the visual acuity for spatial relations that are intrinsic to the geometric structure of the stimulus pattern versus those that are based on retinal positions. The optical stimulus patterns consist of points and line segments presented on cathode ray tube displays under computer control, with precise control of the spatial and temporal parameters of the patterns. Human observers discriminate patterns with slightly different geometric structures. Visual performance is measured by the psychometric function relating discrimination accuracy to the magnitude of a geometrical variable, providing separate measures of the gain and threshold for obtaining visual information about a particular geometrical variable.