When stereopsis does not improve with increasing contrast

It is well known that stereoacuity for conventional (1st-order) stimuli improves with increasing contrast with an approximate slope of -0.5 on log-log axes (Halpern DL, Blake RR. Perception 1988;17:483-495; Legge GE, Gu Y. Vis Res 1989;29:989-1004). In the experiments reported here a variety of stimuli were used (Gabor patches, amplitude modulated stimuli and 1D noise patches) and tasks (stereoacuity and Dmax) to determine if 2nd-order stereopsis shows a similar square root dependence. The results consistently demonstrate that the effect of contrast on stereopsis is quite different for the 2nd-order stimuli. Increases in stimulus contrast have little effect on performance; the resulting slopes are very shallow. The pattern of results is similar when the interocular contrast ratio is varied, demonstrating that 2nd-order processing is more resilient to stimulus differences in the two eyes than 1st-order.