Distortions of three-dimensional space in the perceptual analysis of motion and stereo.

A fundamental issue in the study of human vision is the accuracy with which observers can perceive the three-dimensional structures of objects in the environment. The formal mapping from physical to perceived space is considered as a geometric transformation, and the literature is reviewed to identify which aspects of object structure are systematically distorted by this transformation and which ones remain invariant. In the perceptual analysis of several different sources of optical information, including motion and stereo, both individually and in combination, there is a consistent pattern of results to indicate that perceived depth intervals are scaled differently from comparable intervals in either horizontal or vertical directions. These and other findings provide strong evidence that the relationship between physical and perceived space is noneuclidean, and that the three-dimensional structures of objects can appear systematically distorted even when viewed under full cue conditions.