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An older view on distance perception: older adults perceive walkable extents as farther

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Abstract

According to the action-specific perception account, spatial perception is affected by the specific energetic costs required to perform an action. In the current experiments, we examined the effect of age on distance perception. Older and younger adults were asked to verbally estimate distance to a target placed in a hallway. Results showed that older adults estimated distances to be farther compared to younger adults. Additionally, older and younger adults estimated distances on a surface that was easier to walk on (carpet) and on a surface that was more difficult to walk on (carpet covered by a plastic tarp). For older adults, distances looked farther on the plastic surface than on the carpet. These differences across surfaces were not found for able, younger adults. These results suggest that the type of floor surface available influences perception of distances. Furthermore, the results suggest that perception is still sensitive to environmental differences that affect ability even as a perceiver ages.

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Notes

  1. All volunteers who participated in Experiments 1 or 2 (25 older adults, 12 younger adults) also performed an additional task at the end where they were asked to verbally estimate the visible length (40 cm) of a horizontally held tape measure. Measurements on the tape measure were not visible to the participant. Age did not significantly affect length estimates, t(35) = 0.80, p = .43 (older adults: M = 41.12 cm, SD = 4.72; younger adults: M = 39.48 cm, SD = 6.75). We found that estimates for this action-irrelevant extent were similar for older and younger adults. Although the extent used here was much shorter and allocentric, past research demonstrates that these action-specific effects do occur for extents in this range (e.g. Witt et al. 2005). These results provide support that the obtained results are not due to general bias by or a general task demands for older adults to report larger numbers.

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Acknowledgments

The work was supported by NSF grant BCS-0957051 to JKW. The authors would like to thank Alexander Francis and Robert Proctor for their helpful discussions, Taitlin Resetic for her help with data collection, and University Place for their assistance.

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Correspondence to Mila Sugovic.

Appendix: Physical activity questionnaire

Appendix: Physical activity questionnaire

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Sugovic, M., Witt, J.K. An older view on distance perception: older adults perceive walkable extents as farther. Exp Brain Res 226, 383–391 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3447-y

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