Contrast and depth perception: effects of texture contrast and area contrast

Many objects in natural scenes have textures on their surfaces. Contrast of the texture surfaces (the texture contrast) reduces when the viewing distance increases. Similarly, contrast between the surfaces of the objects and the background (the area contrast) reduces when the viewing distance increases. The texture contrast and the area contrast were defined by the contrast between random dots, and by the contrast between the average luminance of the dot pattern and the luminance of the background, respectively. To examine how these two types of contrast influence depth perception, we ran two experiments. In both experiments two areas of random-dot patterns were presented against a uniform background, and participants rated relative depth between the two areas. We found that the rated depth of the patterned areas increased with increases in texture contrast. Furthermore, the effect of the texture contrast on depth judgment increased when the area contrast became low.