Quantitative depth for a phantom surface can be based on cyclopean occlusion cues alone.

Abstract

Liu, L., Stevenson, S.B., and Schor, C.M. (1994, Nature, 367, 66-669) reported quantitative stereoscopic depth in a phantom rectangle which appeared to lack conventional matching elements. Later, Gillam, B.J. (1995, Nature, 373, 202-203) and Liu, L., Stevenson, S.B., and Schor, C.M. (1995, Nature, 373, 203) and Liu, L., Stevenson, S.B., and Schor, C.M. (1997, Vision Research, 37(5), 633-644) indicated that the varying depth of the phantom rectangle could be based on stereoscopic matching. To remove the contaminating effects of conventional stereopsis from the Liu et al. (1994) original example, we presented a pair of parallel vertical lines to each eye where there is a central gap in the right line for the left eye's view and in the left line for the right eye's view. Observers saw a phantom rectangle bounded by subjective contours whose depth increased with the thickness of the lines. We attribute the quantitative variation of depth to a purely cyclopean (binocular) process sensitive to the pattern of contour presence and absence in the two eye's view.