A New Theory of Binocular Vision

Stereopsis and binocular rivalry.

“…For all real-world contours in the frontal plane or, more accurately, on the horopter, the assertions made by the rivalry pathway will be identical to those made by the stereopsis pathway. As many suppression theorists (e.g., Verhoeff, 1935Verhoeff, , 1959 note, if rivalry replaces a perceived stimulus from the left eye with an identical one from the right, there is no change to be observed. If we now add to that another identical stimulus from the stereopsis pathway, there is still no noticeable change.…”

“…One class of theoretical solution is to deny the existence of one of these two. Verhoeff(1935Verhoeff( , 1959, for example, held that binocular vision could be explained without allowing for the fusion of the two monocular images into a unique binocular image. At the present time, it is more common to argue that rivalry and Stereopsis cannot coexist at the same point in space and time and that Stereopsis takes precedence; that is, rivalry occurs when Stereopsis cannot occur (e.g., Julesz, 1971, p. 23;Julesz & Tyler, 1976).…”

Possible monocular predictors of binocular rivalry of contours

“…There are a number of theories which attempt to account for binocular rivalry in terms of suppression of some or all of an eye's view (Porta, 1593;Du Tour, 1760;Verhoeff, 1935;Asher, 1953). In general, these approaches have asked how the views of each eye are combined and have tended not to ask what information is at each eye to be combined.…”

“…Local adaptation effects are not syncronous across the two eyes (Fry & Robertson;1935) and when there is a monocular percept change there should be a combined (rivalry) percept change as well. The formof the total percept may be predictable with an analysis of a second factor, contrast.…”

Binocular information summation and the serial processing model

“…The alternation theory predicts (assuming that switching time from one eye to the other is not insignificant relative to our shorter tachistoscopic exposure durations) that at some critical stimulus duration we should be confronted with the surprising result of binocular inferiority relative to monocular performance. The result of no difference would offer some support for a fusion theory or that version of alternation theory that assumes alternate suppression of various corresponding areas, rather than alternation from one eye to the other (see, e.g., Walls, 1942, p. 324;Verhoeff, 1935). If only a few areas alternated at anyone time, no appreciable difference between conditions would be expected in the above experiment.…”