Since Kepler (1604) and Descartes (1637), ‘vergence’ (the angular rotation of the eyes) has been thought of as one of our most important absolute distance cues. But vergence has never been tested as an absolute distance cue divorced from obvious confounding cues such as binocular disparity. In this article, we control for these confounding cues for the first time by gradually manipulating vergence and find that observers fail to accurately judge distance from vergence. We consider several different interpretations of these results and argue that the most principled response to these results is to question the general effectiveness of vergence as an absolute distance cue. Given that other absolute distance cues (such as motion parallax and vertical disparities) are limited in application, this poses a real challenge to our contemporary understanding of visual scale.

中文翻译：

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视觉是否从聚散度中提取绝对距离？

自开普勒 (1604) 和笛卡尔 (1637) 以来，“聚散度”（眼睛的旋转角度）一直被认为是我们最重要的绝对距离线索之一。但聚散度从未被测试为与明显的混杂线索（如双眼视差）分离的绝对距离线索。在本文中，我们首次通过逐渐操纵聚散度来控制这些混淆线索，并发现观察者无法准确判断聚散度的距离。我们考虑了对这些结果的几种不同解释，并认为对这些结果最有原则的反应是质疑聚散作为绝对距离线索的一般有效性。鉴于其他绝对距离线索（例如运动视差和垂直差异）在应用中受到限制，