Abstract
The ability of 18 younger and older adults to visually perceive exocentric distances was evaluated in Experiment 1. The observers judged the extent of fronto-parallel and in-depth spatial intervals at a variety of viewing distances from 50 cm to 164.3 cm. Most of the observers perceived in-depth intervals to be significantly smaller than fronto-parallel intervals, a finding that is consistent with previous studies. While none of the individual observers’ judgments of exocentric distance were accurate, the judgments of the older observers were significantly more accurate than those of the younger observers. The precision of the observers’ judgments across repeated trials, however, was not affected by age. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to examine potential longitudinal changes in the ability to perceive spatial extents across a period of 20.5 years. Two of the authors, whose abilities to perceive spatial extents were thoroughly evaluated in 1994, were re-evaluated in 2014. These observers demonstrated a significant improvement in accuracy for the fronto-parallel intervals from 1994 to 2014. The results of both experiments show that increases in age can produce significant improvements in the visual ability to perceive the magnitude of exocentric distances.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015