The perception of cast shadows

作者：Pascal Mamassian, David C. Knill, Daniel Kersten · 发表于：Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 年份：1998 · DOI：10.1016/s1364-6613(98)01204-2 · 被引用次数：217 · 研究领域：Visual perception and processing mechanisms、Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications、Data Visualization and Analytics

When an object casts its shadow on a background surface, the shadow can be informative about the shape of the object, the shape of the background surface and the spatial arrangement of the object relative to the background. Among all these roles, we found that cast shadows were perceptually most relevant for the recovery of spatial arrangement, especially when the shadow is in motion. This finding is intriguing when one considers the ambiguities in the possible ways that shadow motion can be interpreted. We reasoned that the visual system must use a priori constraints to disambiguate the cast shadow motion. One of these constraints is that the light source is stationary. Though simple, the stationary-light-source constraint supports rich, reliable inferences about the qualitative motions of objects in three dimensions.