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Journal Article•DOI•

Manual matching of perceived surface orientation is affected by arm posture: evidence of calibration between proprioception and visual experience in near space

Zhi Li1, Frank H. Durgin1•
Swarthmore College1
01 Jan 2012-Experimental Brain Research (Springer-Verlag)-Vol. 216, Iss: 2, pp 299-309
TL;DR: Two claims are supported: (1) manual orientation matching to visual surfaces is based on manual proprioception and (2) calibration between visual and proprioceptive experiences guarantees relatively accurate manual matching for surfaces within reach, despite systematic visual biases in perceived surface orientation.
Abstract: Proprioception of hand orientation (orientation production using the hand) is compared with manual matching of visual orientation (visual surface matching using the hand) in two experiments. In experiment 1, using self-selected arm postures, the proportions of wrist and elbow flexion spontaneously used to orient the pitch of the hand (20 and 80%, respectively) are relatively similar across both manual matching tasks and manual orientation production tasks for most participants. Proprioceptive error closely matched perceptual biases previously reported for visual orientation perception, suggesting calibration of proprioception to visual biases. A minority of participants, who attempted to use primarily wrist flexion while holding the forearm horizontal, performed poorly at the manual matching task, consistent with proprioceptive error caused by biomechanical constraints of their self-selected posture. In experiment 2, postural choices were constrained to primarily wrist or elbow flexion without imposing biomechanical constraints (using a raised forearm). Identical relative offsets were found between the two constraint groups in manual matching and manual orientation production. The results support two claims: (1) manual orientation matching to visual surfaces is based on manual proprioception and (2) calibration between visual and proprioceptive experiences guarantees relatively accurate manual matching for surfaces within reach, despite systematic visual biases in perceived surface orientation.

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Citations
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Journal Article•DOI•
The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception

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Walter E. Davis
01 Jan 2012-Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly

499 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
The social psychology of perception experiments: hills, backpacks, glucose, and the problem of generalizability.

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Frank H. Durgin1, Brennan Klein1, Ariana Spiegel1, Cassandra J. Strawser1, Morgan Williams1 •
Swarthmore College1
19 Mar 2012-Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
TL;DR: Three different assessments of experimental demand indicate that even when the physical environment is naturalistic, and the goal of the main experimental manipulation was primarily concealed, artificial aspects of the social environment may still be primarily responsible for altered judgments of hill orientation.
Abstract: Experiments take place in a physical environment but also a social environment. Generalizability from experimental manipulations to more typical contexts may be limited by violations of ecological validity with respect to either the physical or the social environment. A replication and extension of a recent study (a blood glucose manipulation) was conducted to investigate the effects of experimental demand (a social artifact) on participant behaviors judging the geographical slant of a large-scale outdoor hill. Three different assessments of experimental demand indicate that even when the physical environment is naturalistic, and the goal of the main experimental manipulation was primarily concealed, artificial aspects of the social environment (such as an explicit requirement to wear a heavy backpack while estimating the slant of a hill) may still be primarily responsible for altered judgments of hill orientation.

114 citations

Cites background or methods from "Manual matching of perceived surfac..."

  • ...We used a custom inclinometer (Li & Durgin, 2011a) to measure hand orientation relative to a horizontal baseline, using the central axis of the hand to represent the response (Durgin, Li & Hajnal, 2010)....

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  • ...Moreover, free hand measures also have been found to be tightly correlated with verbal measures (Li & Durgin, 2011a)....

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  • ...The gesture was conducted with the hand occluded behind a screen and was measured with a custom inclinometer (Li & Durgin, 2011a)....

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  • ...Li and Durgin (2011a) showed that free hand manual matching techniques were correlated with verbal reports (see also Li & Durgin, 2011b)....

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Journal Article•DOI•
On the anisotropy of perceived ground extents and the interpretation of walked distance as a measure of perception.

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Zhi Li1, Emily Sun, Cassandra J. Strawser, Ariana Spiegel, Brennan Klein, Frank H. Durgin •
Swarthmore College1
01 Apr 2013-Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
TL;DR: It is concluded that walking measures are calibrated for perceived egocentric distance, but that pantomime walking measures may suffer range compression.
Abstract: Two experiments are reported concerning the perception of ground extent in order to discover whether prior reports of anisotropy between frontal extents and extents in depth were consistent across different measures (visual matching and pantomime walking) and test environments (outdoor environments and virtual environments). In Experiment 1 it was found that depth extents of up to 7 m are indeed perceptually compressed relative to frontal extents in an outdoor environment, and that perceptual matching provided more precise estimates than did pantomime walking. In Experiment 2, similar anisotropies were found using similar tasks in a similar (but virtual) environment. In both experiments pantomime walking measures seemed to additionally compress the range of responses. Experiment 3 supported the hypothesis that range compression in walking measures of perceived distance might be due to proactive interference (memory contamination). It is concluded that walking measures are calibrated for perceived egocentric distance, but that pantomime walking measures may suffer range compression. Depth extents along the ground are perceptually compressed relative to frontal ground extents in a manner consistent with the angular scale expansion hypothesis.

40 citations

Cites background or methods from "Manual matching of perceived surfac..."

  • ...…that perceived gaze angles are exaggerated and that perceived egocentric distances are foreshortened, as we have mentioned above, there is no actual contradiction because action can be calibrated to visual experience (Harris, 1963; Held & Freedman, 1965; Li & Durgin, 2012b; Rieser et al., 1995)....

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  • ...Note, in contrast, that if an L-shape configuration (1.5 m x 1.5 m) were placed on the ground 9 m away, and the direct comparison of the frontal and depth legs were requested, participants might tend to switch to a judgment based on estimating the optical slant (Li & Durgin, 2012a)....

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  • ...The angular expansion hypothesis has been successfully applied to findings regarding the perception of egocentric extents, vertical extents and slant whereas other theories tend to have a more limited scope (see Li & Durgin, 2012a)....

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  • ...One, associated with shape tasks such as the aspect ratio task developed by Loomis et al. (1992), is quite a large anisotropy that seems to be related to the misperception of local optical slant (Li & Durgin, 2010, 2012a; Loomis & Philbeck, 1999; Loomis et al., 2002)....

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  • ...…hypothesis The angular expansion hypothesis is based on evidence that two angular variables, optical slant and the gaze declination, are perceptually exaggerated in the range most relevant in action space (Durgin and Li, 2011; Durgin et al., 2010; Li and Durgin, 2009, 2010, 2012a; Li et al., 2011)....

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Journal Article•DOI•
A comparison of two theories of perceived distance on the ground plane: The angular expansion hypothesis and the intrinsic bias hypothesis

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Zhi Li1, Frank H. Durgin1•
Swarthmore College1
01 Jan 2012-I-perception
TL;DR: While the intrinsic bias hypothesis is proposed only for explaining distance biases, the angular expansion hypothesis provides accounts for a broader range of spatial biases.
Abstract: Two theories of distance perception—ie, the angular expansion hypothesis (Durgin and Li, 2011 Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 73 1856-1870) and the intrinsic bias hypothesis (Ooi et al, 2006 Perception 35 605-624)—are compared. Both theories attribute exocentric distance foreshortening to an exaggeration in perceived slant, but their fundamental geometrical assumptions are very different. The intrinsic bias hypothesis assumes a constant bias in perceived geographical slant of the ground plane and predicts both perceived egocentric and exocentric distances are increasingly compressed. In contrast, the angular expansion hypothesis assumes exaggerations in perceived gaze angle and perceived optical slant. Because the bias functions of the two angular variables are different, it allows the angular expansion hypothesis to distinguish two types of distance foreshortening—the linear compression in perceived egocentric distance and the nonlinear compres- sion in perceived exocentric distance. While the intrinsic bias is proposed only for explaining distance biases, the angular expansion hypothesis provides accounts for a broader range of spatial biases.

35 citations

Why Do Hills Look So Steep

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Frank H. Durgin, Zhi Li
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: This chapter reviews current knowledge of the phenomenology of slant misperception in relation to both functionalist and mechanistic accounts of this perceptual bias with respect to not only slant, but also other angular variables relevant to the biological measurement of surface layout.
Abstract: Hills look much steeper than they are. This chapter reviews current knowledge of the phenomenology of slant misperception in relation to both functionalist and mechanistic accounts of this perceptual bias. Recent discoveries suggest that this misperception of the geometry of our environment may be related to useful biological information coding strategies with respect to not only slant, but also other angular variables relevant to the biological measurement of surface layout. Even in the absence of hills, people misperceive the direction of their gaze systematically in ways that seem to contribute to the vertical expansion of the perceived environment.

20 citations

References
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Journal Article•DOI•
Is there an optimal arm posture ? Deterioration of finger localization precision and comfort sensation in extreme arm-joint postures

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Yves Rossetti1, Cedric Meckler1, Claude Prablanc1•
French Institute of Health and Medical Research1
01 Jan 1994-Experimental Brain Research
TL;DR: The results suggest that the choice of comfortable postures for the arm corresponds to an optimization of arm positionsignal reliability, and this new constraint might be a useful tool for further investigation on posture or trajectory formation.
Abstract: Processing of joint redundancy is one of the most important problems in motor control. For instance, gaze orientation can be obtained with an infinite number of eye and head combinations. It has been proposed that a solution to this problem might be the minimization of eye and head position-signal errors. For arm movements, where the excess of degrees of freedom is even higher, cost function was proposed as a criterion for movement selection, reflecting some comfort variable evoked from the peripheral inputs, e.g. optimal muscular energy cost or glucose consumption. However, no biological implication of comfort on motor control has yet been demonstrated. We have further investigated this approach by hypothesizing that arm posture choice also relies on a minimization of position-signal errors arising from individual joints. The prediction is that accuracy of fingertip localization by pointing made by the contralateral hand would be enhanced for comfortable postures of the target arm and degraded for uncomfortable postures using extreme joint positions. Results show an increase in pointing variability when extreme joint postures are used (wrist flexion, shoulder elevation, or both). This increase in pointing variability is proportional to the increase in subjective discomfort rating. Individual joint effects can be added arithmetically into a whole arm value for both discomfort rating and pointing variable and constant error. These results suggest that the choice of comfortable postures for the arm corresponds to an optimization of arm position-signal reliability. This new constraint might be a useful tool for further investigation on posture or trajectory formation.

103 citations

"Manual matching of perceived surfac..." refers background in this paper

  • ...1995), the idea of avoiding extreme joint angles (Cruse and Bruwer 1987), and the idea of minimizing position–signal variability (Rossetti et al. 1994)....

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  • ...perceived Wnger location (Rossetti et al. 1994; van Beers et al. 1998), perceived hand position (Wilson et al....

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  • ...The fact that they did not tend to flex only one joint is consistent with the idea of avoiding extreme joint angles (Cruse and Bruwer 1987) because extreme joint angles suffer greater signal variability (Rossetti et al. 1994)....

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  • ...It has been shown that arm posture can affect perceived finger location (Rossetti et al. 1994; van Beers et al. 1998), perceived hand position (Wilson et al. 2010), and perceived elbow angle (Fuentes and Bastian 2010)....

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  • ...A plausible account for these posture effects is that hand actions might be associated with optimal arm postures that possess minimal proprioception errors (Rossetti et al. 1994)....

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Journal Article•DOI•
Large systematic deviations in the haptic perception of parallelity

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Astrid M. L. Kappers
01 Aug 1999-Perception
TL;DR: This article showed that what subjects haptically perceive as parallel often deviates greatly from what is actually physically parallel when rotated by a test bar in such a way that it felt as though it was parallel to a reference bar.
Abstract: Recently, Kappers and Koenderink (1999 Perception28 781–795) showed that what subjects haptically perceive as parallel often deviates greatly from what is actually physically parallel. In their experiment, subjects had to rotate a test bar in such a way that it felt as though it was parallel to a reference bar. Their data were obtained with the right hand on a table plane to the right side of the median plane of the subject. The present study extends that work in a number of ways: (1) the locations of the stimuli cover the total reachable table plane; (2) distances between stimuli can also be large (more than 1 m); (3) experiments are done both unimanually (with the right and left hand) and bimanually. Like in the previous study, the results show large systematic deviations that correlate significantly with horizontal (left-right) distance between the two bars but not with vertical (forward–backward) distance. Thus we have established that a description of the results in terms of a horizontal gradient in ...

102 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
The Müller-Lyer illusion explained by the statistics of image–source relationships

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Catherine Q. Howe1, Dale Purves1•
Duke University1
25 Jan 2005-Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
TL;DR: It is shown that the perceptual effects elicited by the Müller-Lyer stimulus and its major variants are correctly predicted by the probability distributions of the possible physical sources underlying the relevant retinal images.
Abstract: The Muller-Lyer effect, the apparent difference in the length of a line as the result of its adornment with arrowheads or arrow tails, is the best known and most controversial of the classical geometrical illusions. By sampling a range-image database of natural scenes, we show that the perceptual effects elicited by the MullerLyer stimulus and its major variants are correctly predicted by the probability distributions of the possible physical sources underlying the relevant retinal images. These results support the conclusion that the Muller-Lyer illusion is a manifestation of the probabilistic strategy of visual processing that has evolved to contend with the uncertain provenance of retinal stimuli.

83 citations

"Manual matching of perceived surfac..." refers background in this paper

  • ...As a result, a Bayesian perceptual system can give rise to perceptual biases and optical illusions (e.g. Howe and Purves 2005b)....

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  • ...N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript (Howe and Purves 2005a; Howe et al. 2006)....

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Journal Article•DOI•
Palm boards are not action measures: an alternative to the two-systems theory of geographical slant perception.

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Frank H. Durgin1, Alen Hajnal2, Alen Hajnal1, Zhi Li1, Natasha A. Tonge1, Anthony Stigliani1 •
Swarthmore College1, University of Southern Mississippi2
01 Jun 2010-Acta Psychologica
TL;DR: The dominant hypothesis that palm board accuracy is related to the need for motor action to be accurately guided is tested and it is concluded instead that the perceptual experience of palm-board orientation is biased and variable due to poorly calibrated proprioception of wrist flexion.

79 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
The underestimation of egocentric distance: evidence from frontal matching tasks

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Zhi Li1, John Phillips1, Frank H. Durgin1•
Swarthmore College1
07 Jul 2011-Attention Perception & Psychophysics
TL;DR: To measure perceived egocentric distance nonverbally, observers in a field were asked to position themselves so that their distance from one of two experimenters was equal to the frontal distance between the experimenters.
Abstract: There is controversy over the existence, nature, and cause of error in egocentric distance judgments. One proposal is that the systematic biases often found in explicit judgments of egocentric distance along the ground may be related to recently observed biases in the perceived declination of gaze (Durgin & Li, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, in press), To measure perceived egocentric distance nonverbally, observers in a field were asked to position themselves so that their distance from one of two experimenters was equal to the frontal distance between the experimenters. Observers placed themselves too far away, consistent with egocentric distance underestimation. A similar experiment was conducted with vertical frontal extents. Both experiments were replicated in panoramic virtual reality. Perceived egocentric distance was quantitatively consistent with angular bias in perceived gaze declination (1.5 gain). Finally, an exocentric distance-matching task was contrasted with a variant of the egocentric matching task. The egocentric matching data approximate a constant compression of perceived egocentric distance with a power function exponent of nearly 1; exocentric matches had an exponent of about 0.67. The divergent pattern between egocentric and exocentric matches suggests that they depend on different visual cues.

78 citations

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