Greater depth seen with phantom stereopsis is coded at the early stages of visual processing
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Updated: Aug 19, 2026

A Battery of Quantitative Binocular Vision Tests for Adults: Testing Protocols
Published on: June 16, 2026
Hiroyuki Mitsudo1, Sachio Nakamizo, Hiroshi Ono
1Centre for Vision Research, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ont., Canada M3J 1P3. hmitsudo@hpl.cvr.yorku.ca
Abstract:
A visual search task was used to investigate the spatially parallel coding of depth from binocular disparity and from binocularly unmatched features. Experiment 1, using disparity noise, showed that detectability is higher for illusory phantom targets defined by unmatched features than for disparity-defined targets, although the two targets were equated as to theoretically minimum depth. Experiment 2, using binocularly unmatched noise whose width was equal to the disparity of the noise used in Experiment 1, showed that noise severely interferes with the detection of both the disparity and the phantom targets. These results are consistent with the idea that the greater depth seen with phantom stereopsis is coded at the early stages of visual processing.
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