Abstract
Perception is crucial for the control of action, but perception need not be scaled accurately to produce accurate actions. This paper reviews evidence for an elegant new theory of locomotor space perception that is based on the dense coding of angular declination so that action control may be guided by richer feedback. The theory accounts for why so much direct-estimation data suggests that egocentric distance is underestimated despite the fact that action measures have been interpreted as indicating accurate perception. Actions are calibrated to the perceived scale of space and thus action measures are typically unable to distinguish systematic (e.g., linearly scaled) misperception from accurate perception. Whereas subjective reports of the scaling of linear extent are difficult to evaluate in absolute terms, study of the scaling of perceived angles (which exist in a known scale, delimited by vertical and horizontal) provides new evidence regarding the perceptual scaling of locomotor space.
Highlights
Perception is crucial for the control of action, but perception need not be scaled accurately to produce accurate actions
Because angular variables are inherently encoded on a scale that is non-arbitrary and bounded at both ends, the converging evidence for systematic biases in perceived angular declination means that it is appropriate to speak of the mis-scaling of perceived distance with greater confidence
The main conclusion to be drawn from this review is that there are clearly systematic biases in the human perceptual coding of locomotor space as revealed by multiple methodologies designed to examine perceived angular declination
Summary
Perception is crucial for the control of action, but perception need not be scaled accurately to produce accurate actions. Given that height and depth seem to be differently scaled in perception, it could be that people are reporting egocentric distances in terms of the verbal height scale that they are most familiar with, and that verbal underestimation of ground extents is a result of the prevalent calibration of verbal reports of standard units to vertical extents (the heights of persons).
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