Hirata Takashi, Kawai Nobuyuki
Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences, Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan.
JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists, Tokyo, Japan.
J Vis. 2025 Jan 2;25(1):1. doi: 10.1167/jov.25.1.1.
Humans can estimate the time and position of a moving object's arrival. However, numerous studies have demonstrated superior position estimation accuracy for descending objects compared with ascending objects. We tested whether the accuracy of position estimation for ascending and descending objects differs between the upper and lower visual fields. Using a head-mounted display, participants observed a target object ascending or descending toward a goal located at 8.7° or 17.1° above or below from the center of the monitor in the upper and lower visual fields, respectively. Participants pressed a key to match the time of the target's arrival at the goal, with the gaze kept centered. For goals (8.7°) close to the center, ascending and descending objects were equally accurate, whereas for goals (17.1°) far from the center, the ascending target's position estimation in the upper visual field was inferior to the others. Targets moved away from the center for goals further from the center and closer to the center for goals nearer to the center. As the positional accuracy of ascending and descending objects was not assessed for each of the four goals, it remains unclear which was more important for impaired accuracy: the proximity of the target position or direction of the upward or downward motion. However, taken together with previous studies, we suggest that estimating the position of objects moving further away from the central fovea of the upper visual field may have contributed to the asymmetry in position estimation for ascending and descending objects.
人类能够估计移动物体到达的时间和位置。然而，大量研究表明，与上升物体相比，下降物体的位置估计精度更高。我们测试了上升和下降物体的位置估计精度在上下视野之间是否存在差异。使用头戴式显示器，参与者分别观察一个目标物体在上下视野中朝着位于显示器中心上方8.7°或下方17.1°处的目标上升或下降。参与者按下一个按键以匹配目标到达目标的时间，同时保持注视中心。对于靠近中心的目标（8.7°），上升和下降物体的准确性相同，而对于远离中心的目标（17.1°），上视野中上升目标的位置估计不如其他情况。对于离中心更远的目标，目标会远离中心移动；对于离中心更近的目标，目标会靠近中心移动。由于未针对四个目标中的每一个评估上升和下降物体的位置准确性，因此尚不清楚对于准确性受损而言，哪个因素更重要：目标位置的接近程度还是向上或向下运动的方向。然而，结合先前的研究，我们认为估计远离上视野中央凹移动的物体的位置可能导致了上升和下降物体位置估计的不对称性。
