This is the story of a young girl (Jami Weilert) who searched through the internet to get information about depth perception for an upcoming science project (in 1995). This search led to me (Jocelyn Faubert). We had an exchange and she mentioned that her interest was to compare the performance of young boys and girls on a depth perception test. Her question was whether there was a difference in depth performance (developmental) between the two sexes. I immediately started thinking about the regular stereoscopic tests available. Then I realized that these tests generally measure the minimal disparity required to perceive depth (stereoacuity) and that it would be doubtful that the boys and girls would do differently in a hyperacuity type of task. There is no evidence that they differ in such resolution tasks. However, it has been argued that males and females may differ in their visuo-spatial capacities such as mental rotation tasks etc. Therefore, there is a possibility that males and females would differ if the measure of depth capacity was binocular stereoscopic correlation (correspondence problem). When one is looking at a random-dot stereogram it often takes a certain time to construct the image initially which is evidence of some form of mental construction of visuo-spatial information. Therefore, this may be a visual capacity where the young boys and girls, which Jami is interested in, may differ. The next challenge is to make this easy to measure for Jami's science project. Because there is no such test clinically available I decided to develop a testing chart which I will call the Faubert-Weilert 3D Correspondence Test.
e-mail: jocelyn.faubert@umontreal.ca