RESUMEN
The ability of younger and older observers to perceive 3-D shape and depth from motion parallax was investigated. In Experiment 1, the observers discriminated among differently curved 3-dimensional (3-D) surfaces in the presence of noise. In Experiment 2, the surfaces' shape was held constant and the amount of front-to-back depth was varied; the observers estimated the amount of depth they perceived. The effects of age were strongly task dependent. The younger observers' performance in Experiment 1 was almost 60% higher than that of the older observers. In contrast, no age effect was obtained in Experiment 2. Older observers can effectively perceive variations in depth from patterns of motion parallax, but their ability to discriminate 3-D shape is significantly compromised.
Asunto(s)
Envejecimiento/psicología , Percepción de Profundidad , Percepción de Movimiento , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos , Disparidad Visual , Adulto , Anciano , Atención , Sensibilidad de Contraste , Aprendizaje Discriminativo , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , OrientaciónRESUMEN
In two experiments, we investigated the ability of younger and older observers to perceive and discriminate 3-D shape from static and dynamic patterns of binocular disparity. In both experiments, the younger observers' discrimination accuracies were 20% higher than those of the older observers. Despite this quantitative difference, in all other respects the older observers performed similarly to the younger observers. Both age groups were similarly affected by changes in the magnitude of binocular disparity, by reductions in binocular correspondence, and by increases in the speed of stereoscopic motion. In addition, observers in both age groups exhibited an advantage in performance for dynamic stereograms when the patterns of binocular disparity contained significant amounts of correspondence "noise." The process of aging does affect stereopsis, but the effects are quantitative rather than qualitative.