THE VISUAL CONTOUR IN-DEPTH

We asked subjects to match points on the surface of a smooth three-dim ensional (3-D) shape with points on the surface of another object that was geometrically identical to the first object but was placed in a d ifferent pose, was differently textured, and was differently shaded. I n all cases, the fiducial point was on the rim of one of the objects ( i.e., the boundary of the visible region of the surface), whereas the matching point was well within the silhouette of the other object. Thi s allowed us to draw (preliminary) conclusions concerning the way mono cular human observers are able to handle the neighborhood of the rim, where the local slant assumes arbitrarily high values. All experiments were done in real space with real objects (no computer-simulated scen es), the points being indicated with laser beam illumination. The subj ect was given control over the direction of the laser beams and was th us able to perform the task by adjustment from the vantage position. W e studied both consistency (whether the subject's judgments were invar iant against changes of relative pose) and veridicality (whether the d epth of the visual contour as calculated from the settings agreed with the true distance as measured by mechanical means). Subjects caught m uch of the 3-D structure of the contour but did deviate appreciably an d apparently idiosyncratically from the true geometry.