Abstract
Recent studies have demonstrated the malleability of distance perception in affective/social situations, claiming that distance perception is inherently tied to social experience. Importantly, only an egocentric perspective, involving distances between the observer and a target stimulus, was studied. The present series of experiments investigated whether similar distortions of space also hold true for allocentric conditions. Using a variety of displays presenting individuals in different spatial configurations and various relationships to each other, it was tested whether an observer recalled the distance between individuals as smaller or larger depending on their relationship and level of engagement. Distance-altering effects resulting from the attention-direction of the individuals were found. However, thus far there is no evidence for the influence of the social relationships of the agents on the recall of their distance to each other. These results confirm previous research on attention cueing but are not in agreement with theories proposing social top-down effects on spatial memory.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017