University of Benghazi Faculty of Engineering

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Department

IE464 - Human Factors Engineering - Fall 2016

Topic: 5- Visual Sensory Systems

• The Stimulus: Light
• The Receptor System: the Eyeball and the Optic Nerve
• Sensory Processing Limitations
• Bottom-up versus Top-down Processing
• Depth Perception
• Visual Search

Textbooks:

• Wickens, C., Lee, J., Liu, Y., Gordon-Becker, S., An Introduction to Human Factors
Engineering, 2nd Edition, 2004, Pearson Prentice Hall.
• Bridger, R., Introduction to Ergonomics, 2003, Taylor & Francis.
• Kroemer, K., Kroemer, H., Kroemer-Elbert, K., Engineering Physiology, Bases of Human
Factors/Ergonomics, 4th edition, 2010, Springer.
 5- Visual Sensory Systems 2

The Stimulus: Light

• Light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible. The electromagnetic spectrum is
extremely wide but the visible part is extremely narrow.

Electromagnetic spectrum with light highlighted

Source: Wikipedia, obtained: june 2016, url:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EM_spectrum.svg
 5- Visual Sensory Systems 3

The Stimulus: Light

• all visual stimuli that the human can perceive may be described as
a wave of electromagnetic energy. The wave can be represented
as a point along the visual spectrum. this point has a wavelength,
typically expressed in nanometers and an amplitude.
• The wavelength determines the hue of the stimulus that is
perceived, and the amplitude determines its brightness.
• The range of wavelengths typically visible to the eye runs from
short wavelengths of around 400 nm (typically observed as blue-
violet) to long wavelengths of around 700 nm (typically observed
as red).
• a Light stimulus can be characterized by its hue (spectral values),
saturation, and brightness.
 5- Visual Sensory Systems 4

The Stimulus: Light

 5- Visual Sensory Systems 5

The Stimulus: Light

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The Receptor System: the Eyeball and the Optic Nerve

• Light, or electromagnetic energy, must be transformed to
electrochemical neural energy, a process that is accomplished by
the eye.
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The Receptor System: the Eyeball and the Optic Nerve

•Presbyopia, or farsightedness, results

when the lens cannot accommodate
to very near stimuli.
•Myopia, or nearsightedness, results
when the lens cannot flatten and
hence distant objects cannot be
brought into focus.

• As we grow older, the lens becomes flexible in general, but

farsightedness in particular becomes more evident Hence, we see
that the older reader, when not using corrective lenses, must hold
the map farther away from the eyes to try to gain focus, and it
takes longer for that focus to be achieved.
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The Receptor System: the Eyeball and the Optic Nerve

 The Visual receptor system
• The visual angle of an object of height H, viewed at distance D, is
approximately equal to arctan (H/D). Knowing the distance of an
object from a viewer and its size, one can compute this ratio.
• Importantly, the image can also be characterized by where it falls on
the back of the retina because this location determines the types of
visual receptor cells that are responsible for transforming
electromagnetic light energy into the electrical impulses of neural
energy to be relayed up the optic nerve to the brain.
• There are two types of receptor cells, cones and rods , each with six
distinctly different properties. Collectively, these different
properties have numerous implications for our visual sensory
processing.
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The Receptor System: the Eyeball and the Optic Nerve

 The Visual receptor system
Different properties of cones and rods receptors
Properties Cones Rods
Location the fovea the periphery outside the fovea

high ability to resolve low, but highly sensitive to

Acuity
details motion

Light sensitivity low, have high threshold high, have low threshold

Color sensitivity high none, “color blind”

Adaptation
no effect low
(light/dark)

Differential sensitive insensitive to long (i.e., red)

wavelength sensitivity to all wavelengths lengths
 5- Visual Sensory Systems 10

Sensory Processing Limitations

 Contrast sensitivity
• The contrast of a given visual pattern is typically expressed as the
ratio of the difference between the luminance of light, L, and dark,
D, areas to the sum of these two luminance values:

• Contrast sensitivity may be defined as the reciprocal of the

minimum contrast between a lighter and darker spatial area that
can just be detected; that is, with a level of contrast below this
minimum, the two areas appear homogeneous. Hence, the ability
to detect contrast is necessary in order to detect and recognize
shapes.
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Sensory Processing Limitations

 Contrast sensitivity
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Sensory Processing Limitations

 Contrast sensitivity
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Sensory Processing Limitations

 Contrast sensitivity
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Sensory Processing Limitations

 Contrast sensitivity
• For reading print, dark text on lighter background ("negative
contrast") offers higher contrast sensitivity than light on dark
("positive contrast"). black letters on white background maximize
contrast. Black on red is particularly dangerous with low
illumination, since red is not seen by rods.
• “serif” font styles are easier to read than “sans-serif”.
• for single, isolated words, UPPERCASE is as good as lowercase, as,
for example, the label of an "on” switch. This advantage results in
part because of the wider visual angle and lower spatial frequency
presented.
• however, for multiword text, UPPERCASE PRINT IS MORE DIFFICULT
TO READ than lowercase or mixed-case text.
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Sensory Processing Limitations

 Color Sensation
• color vision is a facility employed in the well-illuminated
environment.
• approximately 7 % of the male population is color deficient, that is,
they are unable to discriminate certain hues from each other. Most
prevalent is red-green "color blindness” (protanopia). Thus, design
for monochrome first and use color only as a redundant backup to
signal important information.
• Simultaneous contrast is the tendency of some hues to appear
different when viewed adjacent to other hues.
• The negative afterimage the greater intensity of certain colors when
viewed after prolonged viewing of other colors.
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Sensory Processing Limitations

 Night vision
• The loss of contrast sensitivity at all spatial frequencies can inhibit
the perception of print as well as the detection and recognition of
objects by their shape in poorly illuminated viewing conditions.
Coupled with the loss of contrast sensitivity due to age, it is
apparent that night driving for the older population is a hazardous
undertaking.
• Glare may be defined as irrelevant light of high intensity. Beyond its
annoyance and distraction properties, glare has the effect of
temporarily destroying the rod‘s sensitivity to low spatial
frequencies.
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Bottom-up Versus Top-down Processing

• Much of our processing of perceptual information depends on the delicate
interplay between top-down processing, signaling “what should be there”, and
bottom-up processing, signaling “what is there”.
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Depth Perception
• In order to judge our distance from objects (and the distance
between objects) in 3-D space, we rely on a host of depth cues to
inform us of how far away things are.
• three of these cues -accommodation, binocular convergence, and
binocular disparity (stereopsis)- are all inherent in the physiological
structure and wiring of the visual sensory system. Hence, they may
be said to operate on bottom-up processing.
• All three of these bottom-up cues are only effective for judging
distance, slant, and speed for objects that are within a few meters
from the viewer.
• Judgment of depth and distance for more distant objects and
surfaces depends on a host of what are sometimes called "pictorial"
cues. Because the effectiveness of most pictorial cues is based on
past experience, they are subject to top-down influences.
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Depth Perception
• some of the important pictorial cues to depth are shown in the Figure

•Linear perspective
•Relative size
•Interposition
•Light and shading
•Textural gradients
•Relative motion, or
motion parallax
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Visual Search

• eye movements related to visual search are called saccadic, which

are abrupt, discrete movements from one location to the next. Each
can be characterized by a set of three critical features: an initiation
latency, a movement time (or speed), and a destination.
• Each destination, or dwell, can be characterized by both its dwell
duration and a useful field of view (UFOV). The destination of a scan
is usually driven by top-down processes.
• The dwell duration is governed jointly by two factors: the
information content of the item fixated, and the ease of information
extraction, which is often influenced by stimulus quality.
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Visual Search
• when searching any visual field for something, we distinguish
between targets and nontargets (distractors).
• many searches are serial in that each item is inspected in turn to
determine whether it is or is not a target.
• if the visual search space is organized coherently, people tend to
search from top to bottom and left to right (or right to left). if not,
then searches tend to be considerably more random in structure
and do not "exhaustively” examine all locations.
• a bottom-up influence on serial visual search may occur when
certain targets are so conspicuous that they may "pop out” no
matter where they are in the visual field.
• another influence is the top-down implications of searcher
expectancies of where the target might be likely to lie.
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Visual Search
in conclusion, research on visual search has four general implications:
1. knowledge of conspicuity effects can lead the designer to try to
enhance the visibility of target items.
2. knowledge of the serial aspects of many visual search processes
should forewarn the designer about the costs of cluttered displays.
3. knowledge of the role of top-down processing in visual search
should lead the designer to make the structure of the search field
as apparent to the user as possible and consistent with the user's
knowledge.
4. knowledge of all of these influences can lead to the development
of models of visual search that will predict how long it will take to
find particular targets, such as the flaw in a piece of sheet metal or
an item on a computer menu.