Abstract
In a series of experiments, we tested the hypothesis that severely degraded viewing conditions during locomotion distort the perception of distance traveled. Some research suggests that there is little-to-no systematic error in perceiving closer distances from a static viewpoint with severely degraded acuity and contrast sensitivity (which we will refer to as blur). However, several related areas of research—extending across domains of perception, attention, and spatial learning—suggest that degraded acuity and contrast sensitivity would affect estimates of distance traveled during locomotion. In a first experiment, we measured estimations of distance traveled in a real-world locomotion task and found that distances were overestimated with blur compared to normal vision using two measures: verbal reports and visual matching (Experiments 1 a, b, and c). In Experiment 2, participants indicated their estimate of the length of a previously traveled path by actively walking an equivalent distance in a viewing condition that either matched their initial path (e.g., blur/blur) or did not match (e.g., blur/normal). Overestimation in blur was found only when participants learned the path in blur and made estimates in normal vision (not in matched blur learning/judgment trials), further suggesting a reliance on dynamic visual information in estimates of distance traveled. In Experiment 3, we found evidence that perception of speed is similarly affected by the blur vision condition, showing an overestimation in perception of speed experienced in wheelchair locomotion during blur compared to normal vision. Taken together, our results demonstrate that severely degraded acuity and contrast sensitivity may increase people’s tendency to overestimate perception of distance traveled, perhaps because of an increased perception of speed of self-motion.
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Notes
These results contrast with on-average accurate dynamic updating of distance when walking without vision after static viewing—often referred to as blind walking (Loomis, Silva, Fujita, & Fukusima, 1992; Rieser, Ashmead, Taylor, & Youngquist, 1990)—which may be due to the typically shorter distances used, or the nature of the explicit visually-directed walking task to a known target.
Here, the overestimation in blur occurred only after estimates were made with normal vision. It could be that those who walked with blur first learned that visual information was unreliable and weighted body-based cues for distance traveled more heavily, leading to more accurate judgments. This effect is consistent with the general finding that distance estimates after walking without vision are more accurate than when vision is added (e.g., Sun, Campos, Young, Chan, & Ellard, 2004).
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This Research was supported by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (Grant R01EY017835). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Rand, K.M., Barhorst-Cates, E.M., Kiris, E. et al. Going the distance and beyond: simulated low vision increases perception of distance traveled during locomotion. Psychological Research 83, 1349–1362 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1019-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1019-2