中華心理學刊 民 90，43 卷，1 期，45-64
Chinese Journal of Psychology 2001, Vol.43, No.1, 45-64
Shih-Tseng Tina Huang（Department of Psychology and Center for Research in Cognitive Science, National Chung-Cheng University）；Gary Chon-Wen Shyi（Department of Psychology and Center for Research in Cognitive Science, National Chung-Cheng University）
Abstract
Constructing the 3-D mental structure from projected 2-D orthographic displays may require deciding both the relative depth (RD) between adjacent areas in the display and the exact magnitude of absolute depth (AD) for a given area. In two experiments, we examined the process of depth assignment involved in 3-D model construction. Participants were asked to imagine the 3-D object portrayed by a pair of orthographic projections, and then identify among four alternative isometrics the one that matched the imagined 3-D model. During identification, the target was paired with three distractors that differed from the target in terms of RD, AD, or both, either globally or locally. Either the construction time (Experiment 1) or both the construction time and identification time (Experiment 2) were shortened by various proportions from a self-paced condition. The results indicated that (a) when participants mistook a distractor for target, they were more likely to misidentify the distractor sharing the same RD with target but with different AD, (b) participants could shorten their construction time by as much as 50% without greatly compromising their performance, and (c) participants appeared to be able to assign RD to all regions in an orthographic display in a global manner, but it was doubtful they could do the same for AD. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of a model, in which an observer may try to decide the relative depth prior to figuring out the exact absolute depth, although it is necessary to consider both aspects of depth assignment in the construction of 3-D mental models.
Keywords: Depth construction, 3D structure, Orthographic views, Working memory
