The visual perception of three-dimensional length.

J. Farley Norman, James T. Todd, Victor J. Perotti, James S. Tittle·1996·Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance
DOI 10.1037//0096-1523.22.1.173

Abstract

A set of 4 experiments evaluated observers' sensitivity to three-dimensional (3-D) length, using both discrimination and adjustment paradigms with computer-generated optical patterns and real objects viewed directly in a natural environment. Although observers were highly sensitive to small differences in two-dimensional length for line segments presented in the frontoparallel plane, their discrimination thresholds increased by an order of magnitude when the line segments were presented at random orientations in 3-D space. There were also large failures of constancy, such that the perception of 3-D length varied systematically with viewing distance, even under full-cue conditions.

Cites (1)

  1. Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding.
    Biederman, Irving · 1987 · Psychological Review

Show all 1 references

Cited by (3)

  1. Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action
    Proffitt, Dennis R. · 2006 · Perspectives on Psychological Science
  2. The visual perception of 3D shape
    Todd, James T. · 2004 · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
  3. The rubber hand universe: On the impact of methodological differences in the rubber hand illusion
    Riemer, Martin, Trojan, Jörg, Beauchamp, Marta, Fuchs, Xaver · 2019 · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

See all 244

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The visual perception of three-dimensional length. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0096-1523.22.1.173
The paper
Norman, J. F., Todd, J. T., Perotti, V. J., & Tittle, J. S. (1996). The visual perception of three-dimensional length. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance. https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-1523.22.1.173

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.