Sex and age modulate the visual perception of distance.

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the ability of 28 younger and older adults to visually bisect distances in depth both indoors and outdoors; half of the observers were male and half were female. Observers viewed 15-m and 30-m distance extents in four different environmental settings (two outdoor grassy fields and an indoor hallway and atrium) and were required to adjust the position of a marker to place it at the midpoint of each stimulus distance interval. Overall, the observers' judgments were more accurate indoors than outdoors.