The anisotropy of perceived distance: The eyes story

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine whether the eye position shift changes perceived distance, that is, whether kinesthetic information from eye muscles affects distance perception. Two experiments were done, in a dark room (reduced-cue situation), with 27 participants, psychology undergraduates. Participants had a task to match distances of three stimuli, on three viewing directions, 0, 30 and 60 deg rees relative to the body. Head and body of participants were fixed, and they changed viewing directions only by moving their eyes. Stimuli were 7c

The time, the path, its length and strenuousness in maze learning

“…Based on this, we can conclude that even if barriers increased path length, effects in path preference were not due to the path length, but clearly due to the required effort on a certain path. As mentioned before, effects of effort shown in this study can be related to other findings which indicate, for example, importance of effort for perceived distance in humans (Tošković, 2009(Tošković, , 2011(Tošković, , 2012Witt & Proffitt, 2008;Paterson et al, 2019). It seems like effort required to perform certain actions can be linked to perception of certain characteristics, such as distance.…”

“…It is previously reported that effort has an effect on animals' behavior (Salamone, 2009), and that rats tend to choose a smaller prize if it goes with less effort (Zhang et al, 2018). Also, in human subjects, it is reported that the effort needed to perform an action, can have a significant impact on perceived distance (Tošković, 2009(Tošković, , 2011(Tošković, , 2012. On that line, there is a possibility that walking on the mud required much more effort from the rats than walking on the wooden lining.…”

“…According to S-R and cognitive theories of learning it is not possible to make clear predictions whether path length, time or effort will have the highest effect on path choice, since these two groups of theories only distinguish whether there will be a path preference or not. But, having in mind more recent findings and theories which stress out the importance of effort for animals' behavior (Stephens & Krebs, 1986;Salamone, 2009;Zhang et al, 2018), or human perception (Tošković, 2009(Tošković, , 2011(Tošković, , 2012, we might assume that the amount of effort required to reach the goal will be more important for route choice then path length or time.…”