Peripheral hyperacuity: isoeccentric bisection is better than radial bisection

Performance of three-dot bisection was determined as a function of orientation for a variety of feature separations and field meridians at eccentricities of 0-10 deg for two observers. The dot stimuli and separations were scaled in size to compensate for eccentricity. The precision of three-dot bisection was found to depend on the direction of test-feature offset. In the fovea, horizontal and vertical bisections were better than oblique bisections, while at eccentricities of 5-20 deg, isoeccentric (on a tangent to a circle of a given eccentricity) bisection was better than radial bisection. The direction of offset was more important than the orientation of the stimulus. Large separations showed a stronger effect than small separations. The anisotropy of bisection appears different from the meridional effect for resolution and is unlikely to be simply related to a local anisotropy of the cortical magnification factor.