Sensory Motor Development and Plasticity

Depth Perception Learning in Adults

Seminararbeit , 2014 , 6 Seiten , Note: A

Psychologie - Entwicklungspsychologie

Our aim was to confirm that vision in adults can be trained to associate certain retinal locations with specific depth arrangements of stimuli, such that presenting a depth-ambiguous stimulus at a certain retinal location would cause it to be perceived to have a specific depth arrangement. Even if Backus et al. have already demonstrated that "cue-recruitment" is still possible in human adults, i.e. that adults can still learn to associate any arbitrary stimulus feature with depth, we were not able to verify the hypothesis that our ability to perceive depth is not innate and - thus - purely a product of postnatal learning experience, whereby the capacity is still present in human adults. We verified that the 14 subjects could reliably report depth as a group, but they did not perceive, more than would be expected by chance, the same depth arrangement for an ambiguous stimulus at a particular location in the test block as they had for the unambiguous stimuli at that location in the training blocks. Hence, we rejected the first H_{0, training} hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the number of correct and incorrect answers during the training session, and furthermore, retained the second H_{0, test} hypothesis that there is no significant difference between the number of trials, in which a test block was perceived to be same or opposite to the previous training stimuli at the respective same location as in the training trials, since the paired t-test gave rise to t(13)_{0.05}=0.2 , which is well below the expected value for a one-tailed t-test of 1.7.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References

Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte

This report investigates the ability of adults to learn new depth cues through association training. The study aims to confirm whether vision in adults can be modified by associating specific retinal locations with certain depth arrangements of stimuli, such that the presentation of a depth-ambiguous stimulus at a particular location would cause it to be perceived as having a certain depth arrangement.

• Depth perception learning in adults
• Association training of specific retinal locations with depth arrangements
• Cue-recruitment in adults
• Influence of postnatal experience on depth perception
• Comparison of depth perception in ambiguous and unambiguous stimuli

Zusammenfassung der Kapitel

The introduction discusses the classical debate in psychology regarding the extent to which our ability to perceive the world is biologically predetermined versus the product of postnatal experience. It highlights the "visual cliff" paradigm used to investigate depth perception in infants and raises the question of whether this ability to learn new cues to depth is still present in human adults.

The methods section details the experimental design, which involved training participants to associate specific retinal locations with depth arrangements through a depth discrimination task. Participants were presented with a fixation cross followed by a rectangle in one of two positions, either above or below fixation. The depth arrangement of the rectangle was manipulated based on its position and the participant's group assignment. In the test block, the rectangle was presented to just one eye, creating an ambiguous depth stimulus. The study aimed to determine whether participants would perceive the ambiguous stimulus as having the same depth arrangement as previously observed in the respective location.

The results section presents the findings of the study, indicating that the group of 14 undergraduate observers who reported seeing depth were able to reliably report the depth arrangement of stimuli presented in the training blocks. However, the study did not find evidence that participants perceived the ambiguous stimulus in the test block as having the same depth arrangement as the unambiguous stimuli in the training blocks. This suggests that the ability to learn new depth cues through association training may be limited in adults.

The discussion section explores potential limitations of the experiment, including the lack of a response option for "no clear depth percept" and the fact that only a small proportion of participants reported seeing depth in the training trials. It also considers the potential impact of the constant switch in the question "Which location is nearer/further?" on participant performance.

Schlüsselwörter

The keywords and focus themes of the text include depth perception, cue-recruitment, visual learning, adult plasticity, retinal location, depth discrimination, ambiguous stimuli, and postnatal experience. The study investigates the ability of adults to learn new depth cues through association training, exploring the potential for visual plasticity and the role of postnatal experience in shaping depth perception.

• Hochschule: University of Cambridge (Department of Psychology)
• Veranstaltung: Part IB Experimental Psychology
• Note: A
• Autor: Laura Imperatori (Autor:in)
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2014
• Seiten: 6
• Katalognummer: V276479
• ISBN (eBook): 9783656694601
• ISBN (Buch): 9783656696988
• Sprache: Englisch
• Schlagworte: sensory, motor, development, plasticity, depth, perception, learning, adults