Examining the Role of Familiarity in the Perception of Depth

Abstract

Bishop Berkeley suggested that the distance of an object can be estimated if the object’s size is familiar to the observer. It has been suggested that humans can perceive the distance of the object by using such “familiarity” information, but most or many of the prior experiments that found an effect of familiarity were not designed to minimize or eliminate potential influences of: higher cognitive factors on the observers’ responses, or the influences of low-level image features in the visual stimuli used. We looked for the familiarity effect in two experiments conducted both in Russia and Japan. The visual stimuli used were images of three coins used in Russia and Japan. The participants’ depth perception was measured with a multiple-choice task testing the perceived depth-order of the coins. Our expectation was that any effect of “familiarity” on depth perception would only be observed with the coins of the participant’s country. We expected a substantial familiarity effect based on our meta-analysis of the “familiarity” effects observed in prior experiments. But, our results in both experiments showed that the familiarity effect was virtually zero. These findings suggest that the importance of a familiarity effect in depth perception should be reconsidered.

Design and analysis of depth cues on depth perception in interactive mixed reality simulation systems

“…They had no spatial depth perception defects. Mischenko et al 42 demonstrated that familiarity affects depth perception. Therefore, we familiarized each participant with the experimental process and system prior to the experiment via oral or written means only.…”

Location of the virtual image for an underwater object observed at oblique angles

“…The astigmatic elongation effect becomes negligible when using a shorter focal-length camera, like NIKON18 mm and iPhone. Under the conditions, the relationship among the lens size, the photo quality, and the shooting distance is expressed quantitatively in terms of the depth of field (DOF), the zone of distances that are within acceptable sharpness defined with the circle of confusion (COC) [30][31][32]. Fig.…”

“…For example, in observing the back wall of a water tank in Section 4.1, the author judged the image as image-A, or a standing and shrunken image being located at the object's position, and did not expect the possibility of it being image-B. Such perception in depth must be the familiarity cue [31][32][33]. The familiarity cue is not based on physics but on human experience of known sizes and familiar scene structures.…”