Integration of binocular stereopsis and structure from motion in the discrimination of noisy surfaces

Integration of stereo and motion information was measured on the basis of observers' ability to discriminate between triangle- and sine-wave corrugated surfaces or sinusoidal surfaces of different spatial frequency. Discrimination performance for the triangle-sine task was consistent with independent processing of motion and stereo, but the spatial frequency discrimination task led to performance superior to that predicted by an independent combination of motion and stereo signals, indicating that the integration of stereo and motion depends on the type of 3-dimensional structure observers are required to discriminate. This pattern of results is consistent with the existence of multiple stereoscopic mechanisms suggested by psychophysical and neurophysiological data.