Abstract
An orientation matching task was used to evaluate observers’ sensitivity to local surface orientation at designated probe points on randomly shaped 3-D objects that were optically defined by texture, lambertian shading, or specular highlights. These surfaces could be stationary or in motion, and they could be viewed either monocularly or stereoscopically, in all possible combinations. It was found that the deformations of shading and/or highlights (either over time or between the two eyes’ views) produced levels of performance similar to those obtained for the optical deformations of textured surfaces. These findings suggest that the human visual system utilizes a much richer array of optical information to support its perception of shape than is typically appreciated.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Blake, A., &Bülthoff, H. (1990). Does the brain know the physics of specular reflection?Nature,343, 165–168.
Blake, A., &Bülthoff, H. (1991). Shape from specularities: Computation and psychophysics.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Series B,331, 237–252.
Bülthoff, H. H., &Mallot, H. A. (1988). Integration of depth modules: Stereo and shading.Journal of the Optical Society of America A,5, 1749–1758.
Cipolla, R., &Blake, A. (1990). The dynamic analysis of apparent contours. InProceedings of the Third International Conference on Computer Vision (pp. 616–623). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.
Erens, R. G. F., Kappers, A. M. L., &Koenderink, J. J. (1993a). Estimating local shape from shading in the presence of global shading.Perception & Psychophysics,54, 334–342.
Erens, R. G. F., Kappers, A. M. L., &Koenderink, J. J. (1993b). Perception of local shape from shading.Perception & Psychophysics,54, 145–156.
Giblin, P., & Weiss, R. (1987). Reconstruction of surfaces from profiles. InProceedings of the IEEE First International Conference on Computer Vision (pp. 136-144). IEEE Computer Society Press.
Horn, B. K. P., &Brooks, M. J. (1989).Shape from shading. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horn, B. K. P., &Schunck, B. G. (1981). Determining optical flow.Artificial Intelligence,17, 185–203.
Ikeuchi, K., &Horn, B. K. P. (1981). Numerical shape from shading and occluding boundaries.Artificial Intelligence,17, 141–184.
Johnston, A., &Passmore, P. J. (1994a). Shape from shading: I. Surface curvature and orientation.Perception,23, 169–190.
Johnston, A., &Passmore, P. J. (1994b). Shape from shading: II. Geodesic bisection and alignment.Perception,23, 191–200.Koenderink, J. J., Kappers, A. M. L., Todd, J. T., Norman, J. F., & Phillips, F. (in press). Surface range and attitude probing in stereoscopically presented dynamic scenes.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance.
Koenderink, J. J., &van Doorn, A. J. (1980). Photometric invariants related to solid shape.Optica Acta,27, 981–996.
Koenderink, J. J., & van Doorn, A. J. (in press). Relief: Pictorial and otherwise. Proceedings of the 5th British Machine Vision Conference.
Koenderink, J. J., van Doorn, A. J., &Kappers, A. M. L. (1992). Surface perception in pictures.Perception & Psychophysics,52, 487–496.
Koenderink, J. J., van Doorn, A. J., &Kappers, A. M. L. (1994). On so-called “paradoxical monocular stereoscopy.”Perception,23, 583–594.
Koenderink, J. J., van Doorn, A. J., & Kappers, A. M. L. (in press). Depth relief.Perception.
Marr, D. (1982).Vision. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Mingolla, E., &Todd, J. T. (1986). Perception of solid shape from shading.Biological Cybernetics,53, 137–151.
Nagel, H.-H. (1981). On the derivation of 3D rigid point configurations from image sequences. InProceedings of the IEEE Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Processing (pp. 103–108). New York: IEEE Computer Society Press.
Nagel, H.-H. (1987). On the estimation of optical flow: Relations between different approaches and some new results.Artificial Intelligence,33, 299–234.
Norman, J. F., &Todd, J. T. (1994). Perception of rigid motion in depth from the optical deformations of shadows and occlusion boundaries.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,20, 343–356.
Norman, J. F., Todd, J. T., Perotti, V. J., & Tittle, J. S. (in press). The visual perception of 3D length.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance.
Pentland, A. (1991). Photometric motion.IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence,13, 879–890.
Tittle, J. S., Todd, J. T., Perotti, V. J., & Norman, J. F. (in press). The systematic distortion of perceived 3-D structure from motion and binocular stereopsis.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance.
Todd, J. T. (1985). Perception of structure from motion: Is projective correspondence of moving elements a necessary condition? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,11, 689–710.
Todd, J. T., Koenderink, J. J., van Doorn, A. J., & Kappers, A. M. L. (in press). Effects of changing viewing conditions on the perceived structure of smoothly curved surfaces.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance.
Todd, J. T., &Mingolla, E. (1983). The perception of surface curvature and direction of illumination from patterns of shading.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,9, 583–595.
Todd, J. T., &Mingolla, E. (1984). The simulation of curved surfaces from patterns of optical texture.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,10, 734–739.
Todd, J. T., &Norman, J. F. (1991). The visual perception of smoothly curved surfaces from minimal apparent motion sequences.Perception & Psychophysics,50, 509–523.
Todd, J. T., & Norman, J. F. (in press). The visual discrimination of relative surface orientation.Perception.
Todd, J. T., &Reichel, F. D. (1989). Ordinal structure in the visual perception and cognition of smoothly curved surfaces.Psychological Review,96, 643–657.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant F49620-93-1-0116 to J.T.T.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Farley Norman, J., Todd, J.T. & Phillips, F. The perception of surface orientation from multiple sources of optical information. Perception & Psychophysics 57, 629–636 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213268
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213268