Abstract

The visibility of a binocular grating (the signal) detected against a binocular grating of the same orientation and spatial frequency (the masker) depends both on the interocular phase of the signal and masker as well as on their relative phase. Low spatial-frequency signals presented with a 180° interocular phase difference are as much as an order of magnitude more detectable than inphase signals when both are detected against a masker that has zero interocular phase difference.¹ The effect does not depend on grating orientation and is negligible with frequencies above 6 cycles/degree of visual angle. Several possible explanations of this binocular masking-level difference have been considered; one of them allows the derivation of the range of depths around the plane of the masking grating that observers use in detecting signals.² From this range, a limit for the subset of disparities processed in stereopsis can be obtained.

© 1986 Optical Society of America