Aftereffect of motion-in-depth based on binocular cues: Effects of adaptation duration, interocular correlation, and...

There are at least two possible binocular cues to motion-in-depth, namely disparity change over time and interocular velocity differences. There has been significant controversy about their relative contributions to the perception of motion-in-depth. In the present study, we used the technique of selective adaptation to address this question. In Experiment 1, we found that adaptation to motion-in-depth depicted by temporally correlated random-dot stereograms, which contained coherent interocular velocity difference, produced motion aftereffect in the depth direction irrespective of the adaptors' interocular correlation for any adaptation duration tested. This suggests that coherent changing disparity does not contribute to motion-in-depth adaptation. Because the aftereffect duration did not saturate in the tested range of adaptation duration, it is unlikely that the lack of the effect of changing disparity was due to a ceiling effect. In Experiment 2, we used a novel adaptor that contained a unidirectional coherent interocular velocity difference signal and a bidirectional changing disparity signal that should not induce a motion aftereffect in depth. Following the adaptation, motion aftereffect in depth occurred in the opposite direction to the adaptor's motion-in-depth based on interocular velocity difference. Experiment 3 demonstrated that these results generalized in 12 untrained subjects. These experiments suggest that the contribution of interocular velocity difference to the perception of motion-in-depth is substantial, while that of changing disparity is very limited (if any), at least at the stages of direction-selective mechanisms subject to an aftereffect phenomenon.