A vision scientist was examining whether human depth perception relies on
contextual visual information (i.e., depth cues). He constructed an experiment in which
participants viewed an object in virtual reality and had to estimate how far away the object
was. Participants repeated this many times and the researcher computed how accurately
participants were able to infer the depth of the object. Accuracy was operationalized as the
difference between participant estimates of object distance and the true distance of the
object. On half of the trials, the object appeared in a long hallway with realistic décor, thus
providing contextual depth cues. On the other half of trials, the object appeared in a white
void of empty space. Participants experienced both trial types in randomized order and
their accuracy was compared between the hallway and void conditions. If depth is inferred
from visual cues, accuracy should be lower in the void condition than in the hallway
condition. What analysis should the vision scientist perform to examine whether subjects
we less able to infer depth when deprived of depth cues?
Sample Solution
