If thus the stereoscopic vision under normal conditions is ultimately
dependent upon the central motor impulses, it is not surprising that
a change in the psycho-physical conditions of movement produces a
change in the resulting impulses. Such a change in the conditions is
given indeed whenever the eyes are in a lateral position. Just as
the same stimulus produces a different response when the arm or leg
is in a flexed or an extended position, so the retinal double images
stimulate different responses according to the particular position
of the eyeballs. That pair of unequal retinal images that in primary
eye-position produce in going from one end of the object to the other a
strong increase of convergence and thus a feeling of greater nearness,
may produce with the lateral eye-position no increase of convergence
and thus a feeling of equal distance or even a decrease of convergence
and thus a feeling of removal. The psycho-physical system upon which
our three-dimensional visual perception depends is then much more
complex than the usual theory teaches; it is not the retinal image of
the double eye, but this image together with the whole distribution
of contractions in the eye-muscles, which determines the stereoscopic
vision: the same retinal images may give very different plastic
perceptions for different positions of the eyeballs.
The experiments point thus to the same complex connection which
Professor Münsterberg emphasized in his studies of the "Perception of
distance."[1] I may quote the closing part of his article to bring
out the intimate connection of the two problems. He reports his
observations on the so-called verant and insists that the monocular
verant almost as little as the ordinary binocular stereoscope can give
the impression of normal distance of nature. Professor Münsterberg
writes: "Whoever is able to separate seeing in three dimensions from
seeing in natural distance cannot doubt that in both cases alike we
reach the first end, the plastic interpretation, but are just as far
removed from the other, the feeling of natural distance, as in the
ordinary vision of pictures. The new instrument is thus in no way a
real 'verant.'
"The question arises, Why is that so? If I bring my landscape picture
on a transparent glass plate into such a distance from my one eye
that every point of this transparent photograph covers for my resting
eye exactly the corresponding point of the real landscape and yet
accommodation is excluded, as, for instance, in the case of the
short-sighted eye, or in the case of the normal eye with the verant
lenses, then we have exactly the retinal images of the real view of
nature and the same repose of the lens. Why are we, nevertheless,
absolutely unable to substitute the near object for the far one? This
problem exists in spite of all the theoretical assurances that the one
ought to appear exactly like the other, and I think that it is not
impossible to furnish an answer to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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