Stereoscopic shape discrimination is well preserved across changes in object size

A single experiment evaluated human observers’ ability to discriminate the shape of solid objects that varied in size and orientation in depth. The object shapes were defined by binocular disparity, Lambertian shading, and texture. The object surfaces were smoothly curved and had naturalistic shapes, resembling those of water-smoothed granite rocks. On any given trial, two objects were presented that were either the same or different in terms of shape. When the “same” objects were presented, they differed in their orientation in depth by 25°, 45°, or 65°. The observers were required to judge whether any given pair of objects was the “same” or “different” in terms of shape. The size of the objects was also varied by amounts up to ±40% relative to the standard size. The observers’ shape discrimination performance was strongly affected by the magnitude of the orientation changes in depth – thus, their performance was viewpoint dependent. In contrast, the observers’ shape discrimination abilities were only slightly affected by changes in the overall size of the objects. It appears that human observers can recognize the three-dimensional shape of objects in a manner that is relatively independent of size.