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Binocular Disparity

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Synonyms

Binocular parallax

Definition

Binocular disparity is a binocular depth cue produced by a difference in retinal projection of the same object onto left eye and right eye retinas as a result of a horizontal separation of the eyes.

Introduction

Stereopsis, or the perception of the “true” location of the objects in depth obtained on the basis of binocular information, requires the two eyes to be located at different lateral positions so that they receive slightly different projections onto their retinas when focused on the same point in space (Fig. 1). In addition, stereopsis requires coordinated eye movements; disorders that interfere with this coordination such as amblyopia and strabismus lead patients to report perceiving two images of a single object (diplopia or double vision; Otero-Millan et al. 2014). Although the importance of binocular disparity in achieving depth perception in primate vision is well established, its role in vision of other animals is less clear,...

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References

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Correspondence to Olga Lazareva .

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Lazareva, O. (2017). Binocular Disparity. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2760-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2760-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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