[Paper] Ratio of Pseudo-Stereoanomalous Young Adults and Improvement of Their Stereopsis in 3D-Graphic Environments: Study for Depth Perception Based on the Use of Disparity and Shading

Abstract

We investigated the individual differences in the use of binocular disparity and proposed a method for improving stereopsis in observers who do not perceive depth from disparity in 3D-graphic environments. In Experiment 1, non-stereoanomalous observers, aged 19-25 years, were asked to roughly evaluate the depth of 3D-graphcial stimuli containing binocular disparity and shading. The results of Experiment 1 showed 30% of the observers were pseudo-stereoanomaly who perceived depth only from shading. In Experiment 2, 60% of the pseudo-stereoanomalous observers were able to use disparity when they had to assess the depth concretely. In Experiment 3, all of the observers who participated in Experiment 2 learned to use the disparity information when retasked with roughly estimating again. These results suggest that quite a few people have difficulty in experiencing rich depth perception in current 3D-graphic environments. However, appropriate training procedures would improve their use of disparity information over the long term.

Aging and availability of binocular disparity and pictorial depth cues in 3D graphics contents

“…The study yielded two main findings. First, the ratio of the pseudo‐stereoblind observers in the young group was roughly the same ratio as obtained in a previous study, strongly supporting the claim that a large number of young observers may have degraded depth percepts when viewing rich depth perception in current 3D graphic environments. Second, more than half of middle‐aged observers (40–54 years old) had trouble perceiving depth using disparity information; moreover, the percentage of pseudo‐stereoblind participants increased in older observers (55–83 years old), perhaps because of inadequate visual correction for age‐related visual deficits.…”

“…Note that the classification criterion between the young and young-middle generations was 25 years; this permitted a comparison of the proportion of the young generation with the young generation used in Fujisaki et al where participants were between 19 and 25 years old. 10,11 In addition, because there was a small number of participants whose ages ranged from 55-69 years (i.e., nine participants) in the current study, we merged them with participants aged over 70 for the category of senior generation. A 1 × 4 chi-square test showed no significant bias of number of the participants across generations, χ 2 (3) = 4.57, n.s.…”

“…Individual differences in the availability of binocular disparity on viewing 3D graphics in various visual environments provide important information if the aim of society is to render 3D television accessible and popular for all age groups. Previous studies found that 17-30% of young and young-middle people are pseudo-stereoblind observers, meaning that they do not use disparity information when the depth of 3D graphic stimuli, which is presented for more than a few seconds, were evaluated by subjective judgments 10,11 or a performance-based task. 9 This is the case even though these viewers can actually discriminate small levels of disparity in a Titmus stereoscopic test.…”

“…All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision (12/20 or better). No participant in this study served in the study of Fujisaki et al 10,11 This experiment was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University.…”

“…In the present study, we investigated the relationship between aging and the rate of pseudo‐stereoblind observers in a sample population of 151 individuals whose ages ranged from 17 to 85 years. All these participants were presented with a task in which they had to observe a simple 3D graphic stimuli containing binocular disparity and shading as depth cues (as in Fujisaki et al .,), then judge the depth of 3D stimuli. A portion of this work was previously presented at the Society for Information Display 2013 .…”