Horizontal-vertical anisotropy in visual space

We investigated the structure of visual space with a 3D exocentric pointing task. Observers had to direct a pointer towards a ball. Positions of both objects were varied. We measured the deviations from veridical pointing-directions in the horizontal and vertical planes (slant and tilt resp.). The slant increased linearly with an increasing horizontal visual angle. We also examined the effect of relative distance, i.e., the ratio of the distances between the two objects and the observer. When the pointer was further away from the observer than the ball, the observer directed the pointer in between himself and the ball, whereas when the pointer was closer to the observer he directed the pointer too far away. Neither the horizontal visual angle nor the relative distance had an effect on the tilt. The vertical visual angle had no effect on the deviations of the slant, but had a linear effect on the tilt. These results quantify the anisotropy of visual space.     

Do reference surfaces influence exocentric pointing?

All elements of the visual field are known to influence the perception of the egocentric distances of objects. Not only the ground surface of a scene, but also the surface at the back or other objects in the scene can affect an observer's egocentric distance estimation of an object. We tested whether this is also true for exocentric direction estimations. We used an exocentric pointing task to test whether the presence of poster-boards in the visual scene would influence the perception of the exocentric direction between two test-objects. In this task the observer has to direct a pointer, with a remote control, to a target. We placed the poster-boards at various positions in the visual field to test whether these boards would affect the settings of the observer. We found that they only affected the settings when they directly served as a reference for orienting the pointer to the target.