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Abstract:
It has been suggested that humans combine depth cues in a statistically optimal fashion, taking into account the exact reliability of the available cues to maximize the reliability of the depth estimate. We have reported that human performance on slant-from-texture discrimination depends on the texture type mapped onto the slanted planes. This allows a natural way of manipulating the reliability of the texture cue by simply changing the texture type. Using a slant-discrimination task we tested the reliability-sensitive combination within the same sensory modality using texture and motion, and between sensory modalities using texture and haptic cues. Both within and between senses we found little evidence for optimality. What we did find, in particular for texture and haptic cues, is that cue combination is influenced by the reliability of the cues involved. Quantitatively, however, the much stronger claim of optimality is not met. Taken together, our experiments suggest a depth-cue combination mechanism heuristically taking reliability into account. Optimality, on the other hand, does not hold generally.
