期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2002
卷号:99
期号:20
页码:13184-13188
DOI:10.1073/pnas.162474299
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:A long-standing puzzle in visual perception is that the apparent extent of a spatial interval (e.g., the distance between two points or the length of a line) does not simply accord with the length of the stimulus but varies as a function of orientation in the retinal image. Here, we show that this anomaly can be explained by the statistical relationship between the length of retinal projections and the length of their real-world sources. Using a laser range scanner, we acquired a database of natural images that included the three-dimensional location of every point in the scenes. An analysis of these range images showed that the average length of a physical interval in three-dimensional space changes systematically as a function of the orientation of the corresponding interval in the projected image, the variation being in good agreement with perceived length. This evidence implies that the perception of visual space is determined by the probability distribution of the possible real-world sources of retinal images.