UC Berkeley

The experience of stereovision is something that those of us who have it, can never image a life without it, but those who don’t have it, may become keenly aware that they are missing something else everyone has. The experience of stereovision has been overlooked – with some people arguing that it may not even be a necessary function. However, in this dissertation I show evidence that stereovision is important for everyday visuomotor tasks, those who have impaired stereovision show deficits in the motor movements most dependent on binocular vision and visual feedback. Indeed, the model that best predicts the relationship between stereoacuity and reaching-and-grasping movement kinematics is a linear sum of the peak velocity and the time it takes to for the grip. In particular, the time it takes to form the grip is a movement parameter that reflects the certainty of the intrinsic 3-dimensional properties of the target.

In addition, a lifetime of experience with impaired stereovision does not result in functional adaptations in motor movement that are better than adaptations from people with stereo-loss in adulthood. But rather, the experience of stereovision seems to provide some benefit or stability when binocular vision is artificially disrupted.

Furthermore, we provide evidence that stereovision can be strengthened in adulthood vis direct training using perceptual learning and scaffolding cues in virtual reality. We conclude that the experience of stereovision is indeed an important function in everyday visuomotor tasks and that direct stereo training can be a good tool restore stereovision in children and adults alike.