Cues and Pseudocues in Texture and Shape Perception

This chapter reviews experimental evidence concerning the use of pseudocues in the perception of 3D scene properties such as roughness and depth. In the first two experiments, observers judged surface roughness of an irregular surface in which roughness was varied by scaling the range of depths of bumps and valleys. It is shown that observers did indeed use pseudocues, such as the amount of shadow, and as a result they misperceived surface roughness. A similar phenomenon occurred in the perception of surface gloss. Finally, a third study is summarized in which observers judged the depth of a single bump. This final experiment investigated how pseudocues might be learned and, in particular, how observers determine how much weight to give to a pseudocue in combining it with other depth cues.