The advantage of a ground surface in the representation of visual scenes

Abstract

The present study used change detection tasks to examine whether there is an advantage of a ground surface in representing visual scenes. In 6 experiments a flicker paradigm (Experiment 1 through 4) or a one-shot paradigm (Experiment 5 and 6) was used to examine whether changes on a ground surface were easier to detect than changes on a ceiling surface. Overall, we found that: (1) there was an advantage in detecting changes on a ground surface or changes to objects on a ground surface; (2) this advantage was dependent on the presence of a coherent ground surface; (3) this advantage could propagate to objects connected to the ground surface through “nested” contact relations; (4) this advantage was mainly due to improved encoding rather than improved retrieval and comparison of the ground surface; and (5) this advantage was dependent on the presentation duration of the scene but not the number of objects presented in the scene. Together, these results suggest a unique role of the ground surface in organizing visual scenes.

Aging and the perception of egocentric distance.

“…the calculation of tan(β 1 /β 2 ) is the texture gradient of the surface) (Bian & Andersen, 2010). With some approximation, egocentric distance could also be determined by…”

“…For instance, Bian and Andersen (2008) found that older observers depend less on the information on the ground surface in determining layout in 3-D scenes as compared to younger observers. Given the importance of the ground surface in perceptual organization of scene layout (Bian, Braunstein & Andersen, 2005, 2006; Bian & Andersen, 2010; Gibson, 1950; He & Ooi, 2000; He et al, 2004; McCarley & He, 2000, 2001), one possible pattern of results is that older observers, as compared to younger observers, will have decreased accuracy in judging egocentric distance. On the other hand, recent studies have found that older observers preserve their ability in many perceptual tasks related to distance perception, such as judgment of distance on a frontal-parallel plane (Norman, Holmin & Bartholomew, 2011), judgments of slant (Norman, Crabtree, Bartholomew & Ferrell, 2009), depth from motion parallax (Norman et.…”

Environmental surfaces and the compression of perceived visual space

“…Recent research has also found a ground dominance effect for older observers, although the magnitude of the effect was smaller than that found for younger observers (Bian & Andersen, 2008). Finally, using a change detection paradigm, Bian and Andersen (2010) found that changes to a ground surface or objects on a ground surface were detected faster than changes to a ceiling surface or objects attached to a ceiling surface and that this advantage was mainly due to superior encoding, rather than retrieval and comparison, of ground surface information.…”

Does neck viewing angle affect spatial orientation in an HMD-based VE?

“…Similarly, ground planes are more im- Imura and Tomonaga [2007] argue that this ground dominance effect might be part of our evolution because it also occurs in chimpanzees. Moreover, Bian and Andersen [2010] conduct several experiments suggesting that humans organize scenes based on the ground plane. The ground is also dominant in the distance perception of human infants [Kavšek and Granrud 2013].…”