Abstract
Thirty-two participants judged distances in an outdoor setting. Half of the participants were younger than 30 years, while the remaining half were older than 60 years. The participants' task on each trial was to view two environmental exocentric distances and estimate the distance ratio (i.e., the magnitude of the longer extent relative to the shorter). The individual distance magnitudes ranged from 6.4m to 55.2m. The maximum stimulus distance ratio was 8.0. All of the participants could reliably judge the distance ratios: the mean correlation coefficient relating physical and judged distance ratios was 0.762. The majority of participants, however, underestimated the distance ratios and perceived them to be smaller than they actually were. There were effects of both age and sex. The male participants' estimated distance ratios were 19.1 percent more precise than those of the female participants, while the judgments of the older males were more accurate than those of the younger participants and older females (the slopes of the older males' functions relating judged and actual distance ratios were 55 percent higher, and much closer to 1.0, than those of the other participants).
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017