The cyclopean eye in vision: the new and old data continue to hit you right between the eyes

We argue against recent claims by Erkelens and van Ee (Vision Res., in press) and by Erkelens (Vision Res. 40 (2000) 2411) that "the concept of the cyclopean eye is em leader always irrelevant as far as vision is concerned" (p. 1157) [corrected] and that "perceived direction during monocular viewing is based on the signals of the viewing eye only" (p. 2411), respectively. In Experiment 1, we presented a pair of small lights on a visual axis and measured the absolute visual direction of the near light with reference to different parts of the face. The near light appeared in front of the bridge of the nose or very near it, contrary to what was expected from Erkelens and van Ee's claim that monocular stimuli are seen in their correct locations. In Experiment 2, we replicated Erkelens' experiments with measurements of phoria and analyses of eye movements. The results confirmed his finding that the cyclopean illusion occurred rarely in the monocular condition, but our phoria and eye movement data provided the basis for a very different interpretation. Our data show that the oculomotor signal in his particular monocular condition was considerably weaker than in his binocular condition; therefore, the rarity of the monocular cyclopean illusion is not surprising. Moreover, since both claims above are based on an over-generalization of the results of Erkelens' study, neither claim is persuasive.