Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Wallstrasse 3, D-55099 Mainz, Germany.
Exp Brain Res. 2011 Apr;210(1):13-23. doi: 10.1007/s00221-011-2597-z. Epub 2011 Mar 2.
Judging distances is crucial when interacting with the environment. For short distances in action space (up to 30 m), both explicit verbal estimates and locomotor judgments are fairly accurate. For large distances, data have remained scarce. In two laboratory experiments, our observers judged distances to visual targets presented stereoscopically, either by giving a verbal estimate or by walking the distance to the target on a treadmill. While verbal judgments remained linearly scaled over the whole range of distances from 20 to 262 m, locomotor judgments fell short at distances above 100 m, indicating that observers overestimated the distance they had traveled and increasingly did so as a function of actual target distance. This pattern persisted when controlling for the potential confound of fatigue or reluctance to walk. We discuss different approaches to explain our findings and stress the importance of a differential use of distance cues. A model of leaky path integration showed a good fit with our locomotor data.
判断距离在与环境交互时至关重要。在动作空间的短距离内（最多 30 米），明确的口头估计和运动判断都相当准确。对于大距离，数据仍然很少。在两项实验室实验中，我们的观察者通过给出口头估计或在跑步机上走到目标距离来判断立体视觉目标的距离。虽然口头判断在 20 到 262 米的整个距离范围内保持线性比例，但运动判断在 100 米以上的距离上不足，表明观察者高估了他们走过的距离，并且随着实际目标距离的增加而越来越高估。当控制疲劳或不愿意行走的潜在混淆因素时，这种模式仍然存在。我们讨论了不同的方法来解释我们的发现，并强调了对距离线索的差异化使用的重要性。一个泄漏的路径积分模型与我们的运动数据拟合得很好。
