Familiarity with teammate's attitudes improves team performance in virtual reality.

Virtual reality (VR) is a potentially challenging social environment for effective communication and collaboration. Thus, we conducted a VR study to determine whether increased familiarity with a teammate would improve performance on a joint decision making task. Specifically, because attitude familiarity, or knowledge of another person's attitudes, has been correlated with better relationship functioning in the past, we anticipated that team performance would improve when teammates were first asked to discuss their task-relevant attitudes with one another.

The Role of Visual Information in Body Size Estimation.

The conscious representation of our physical appearance is important for many aspects of everyday life. Here, we asked whether different visual experiences of our bodies influence body width estimates. In Experiment 1, width estimates of three body parts (foot, hips, and shoulders) without any visual access were compared to estimates with visual feedback available in a mirror or from a first-person perspective.

Anxiety Influences the Perceptual-Motor Calibration of Visually Guided Braking to Avoid Collisions.

We investigated whether anxiety influences perceptual-motor calibration in a braking to avoid a collision task. Participants performed either a discrete braking task (Experiment 1) or a continuous braking task (Experiment 2), with the goal of stopping before colliding with a stop sign. Half of participants performed the braking task after an anxiety induction.

Body size estimation of self and others in females varying in BMI.

Previous literature suggests that a disturbed ability to accurately identify own body size may contribute to overweight. Here, we investigated the influence of personal body size, indexed by body mass index (BMI), on body size estimation in a non-clinical population of females varying in BMI. We attempted to disentangle general biases in body size estimates and attitudinal influences by manipulating whether participants believed the body stimuli (personalized avatars with realistic weight variations) represented their own body or that of another person.

Fear Similarly Alters Perceptual Estimates of and Actions over Gaps.

Previous research has demonstrated an influence of one's emotional state on estimates of spatial layout. For example, estimates of heights are larger when the viewer is someone typically afraid of heights (trait fear) or someone who, in the moment, is experiencing elevated levels of fear (state fear). Embodied perception theories have suggested that such a change in perception occurs in order to alter future actions in a manner that reduces the likelihood of injury.

The influence of social context and body size on action judgments for self and others.

Judgments of affordances, the potential actions that an observer can carry out within an environment, require observers to relate information about their body to information in the environment. Although humans can accurately judge affordances for others, it is unknown whether other people's capability to act influences one's own affordance judgments. Based on theoretical accounts and recent empirical evidence highlighting the importance of social information in perception and action, we hypothesized that the action capabilities of another person would influence one's own affordance judgments.

Evaluating the accuracy of size perception on screen-based displays: Displayed objects appear smaller than real objects.

Accurate perception of the size of objects in computer-generated imagery is important for a growing number of applications that rely on absolute scale, such as medical visualization and architecture. Addressing this problem requires both the development of effective evaluation methods and an understanding of what visual information might contribute to differences between virtual displays and the real world. In the current study, we use 2 affordance judgments--perceived graspability of an object or reaching through an aperture--to compare size perception in high-fidelity graphical models presented on a large screen display to the real world.

Effect of Display Technology on Perceived Scale of Space.

Objective: Our goal was to evaluate the degree to which display technologies influence the perception of size in an image.

Background: Research suggests that factors such as whether an image is displayed stereoscopically, whether a user's viewpoint is tracked, and the field of view of a given display can affect users' perception of scale in the displayed image.

Method: Participants directly estimated the size of a gap by matching the distance between their hands to the gap width and judged their ability to pass unimpeded through the gap in one of five common implementations of three display technologies (two head-mounted displays [HMD] and a back-projection screen).

Utilizing topology to generate and test theories of change.

Statistical and methodological innovations in the study of change are advancing rapidly, and visual tools have become an important component in model building and testing. Graphical representations such as path diagrams are necessary, but may be insufficient in the case of complex theories and models. Topology is a visual tool that connects theory and testable equations believed to capture the theorized patterns of change.

Evidence for hand-size constancy: the dominant hand as a natural perceptual metric.

The hand is a reliable and ecologically useful perceptual ruler that can be used to scale the sizes of close, manipulatable objects in the world in a manner similar to the way in which eye height is used to scale the heights of objects on the ground plane. Certain objects are perceived proportionally to the size of the hand, and as a result, changes in the relationship between the sizes of objects in the world and the size of the hand are attributed to changes in object size rather than hand size. To illustrate this notion, we provide evidence from several experiments showing that people perceive their dominant hand as less magnified than other body parts or objects when these items are subjected to the same degree of magnification.

Relating spatial perspective taking to the perception of other's affordances: providing a foundation for predicting the future behavior of others.

Understanding what another agent can see relates functionally to the understanding of what they can do. We propose that spatial perspective taking and perceiving other's affordances, while two separate spatial processes, together share the common social function of predicting the behavior of others. Perceiving the action capabilities of others allows for a common understanding of how agents may act together.

Effect of viewing plane on perceived distances in real and virtual environments.

Three experiments examined perceived absolute distance in a head-mounted display virtual environment (HMD-VE) and a matched real-world environment, as a function of the type and orientation of the distance viewed. In Experiment 1, participants turned and walked, without vision, a distance to match the viewed interval for both egocentric (viewer-to-target) and exocentric (target-to-target) extents. Egocentric distances were underestimated in the HMD-VE while exocentric distances were estimated similarly across environments.

A balancing act: physical balance, through arousal, influences size perception.

Previous research has demonstrated that manipulating vision influences balance. Here, we question whether manipulating balance can influence vision and how it may influence vision--specifically, the perception of width. In Experiment 1, participants estimated the width of beams while balanced and unbalanced.

Duck! Scaling the height of a horizontal barrier to body height.

Recent research shows that the body is used to scale environmental extents. We question whether the body is used to scale heights as measured by real actions (Experiments 1 and 2) or by judgments about action and extent made from a single viewpoint (Experiments 3 and 4). First, participants walked under barriers naturally, when wearing shoes, or when wearing a helmet.

Big people, little world: the body influences size perception.

Previous research has shown that changes to the body can influence the perception of distances in near space (Witt et al, 2005 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 31 880-888). In this paper, we question whether changes to the body can also influence the perception of extents in extrapersonal space, namely the perception of aperture widths. In experiment 1, broad-shouldered participants visually estimated the size of apertures to be smaller than narrow-shouldered participants.