Progressive movement of an object against a background involving deletion or accretion of texture elements as one surface covers or uncovers another. Perceiving this visual obstruction is a reliable depth cue, producing depth perception even in situations with minimal information, a topic pursued intensely by adherents of Gibsonian ecology psychology. Variations of this set-up whereby an object disappears and reappears has been used to study predictive tracking, and thereby object permanence, in infants.
See Depth information, Ecological psychology, Kinetic depth information, Prospective control (psychology)