Accommodation, occlusion, and disparity matching are used to guide reaching: A comparison of actual versus virtual environments.

Abstract

The authors used a virtual environment to investigate visual control of reaching and monocular and binocular perception of egocentric distance, size, and shape. With binocular vision, the results suggested use of disparity matching. This was tested and confirmed in the virtual environment by eliminating other information about contact of hand and target. Elimination of occlusion of hand by target destabilized monocular but not binocular performance. Because the virtual environment entails accommodation of an image beyond reach, the authors predicted overestimation of egocentric distances in the virtual relative to actual environment. This was confirmed. The authors used -2 diopter glasses to reduce the focal distance in the virtual environment. Overestimates were reduced by half. The authors conclude that calibration of perception is required for accurate feedforward reaching and that disparity matching is optimal visual information for calibration.