Depth Perception Obstruction, Method

Method:
We had test subjects kneel on the floor, approximately six feet away from our testing apparatus. This apparatus was a box with two vertical sticks that moved laterally back and forth from the test subject when strings attached to them were manipulated. The test subjects each wore a pair of goggles for the first half of testing, with neither eye being obstructed. Each patient was asked to manipulate the strings to move the laterally moving sticks to a position where they seemed to be most equidistant from the patient his/herself. At this point, a measurement was recorded, according to a ruler placed on top of the apparatus, which told how far apart the sticks in question actually were. Once the measurement was taken, the lateral sticks were then replaced far apart, to a reset position from which the next trial would begin.

We repeated this trial five times with each participant. Then, we had each participant put on a pair of goggles of the same make but that had one eye obscured. The test subjects would alternate from one subject to the next which eye was obstructed, so that an equal number of left and right subject eyes were obstructed through the course of the experiment. Once more, we had each test subject complete five trials in this fashion, recording each time the number of centimeters away from accurate their depth perception actually led them.

The dependant variable in this experiment was the ability of each test subject to perceive depth. The independent variable was replacing an unobstructed pair of goggles with a pair of one-eye-obstructed goggles. Because there were only four test subjects, there were no groups, however two subjects obstructed their left eye for the experiment, while the other two obstructed their right eye, in order to create a balance within the testing environment. Each subject was tested in the same manner as the others. Data were collected in cm on a spreadsheet, measuring the distance that the test sticks were apart from each other, after the test subject had determined they believed they were equidistant from his/herself.
Data were analyzed by finding the average between all 4 test subjects’ results and creating a graph from this data, and by performing a statistical analysis that revealed one- and two-tailed p-value test results.