Visual space perception: phenomenology and function

Distance and Size Perception in Astronauts during Long-Duration Spaceflight

“…The 3D world in which we normally act is an elaborate perceptual representation using a product of sensory and neural processes that have been perfected by millions of years of evolution. The study of mental representation of space is concerned with how people make judgments about size and distance, as well as the global shape and scale of visual space [ 8 ].…”

Estimación de la percepción de distancia durante la locomoción

“…Esa construcción mental del entorno que nos rodea debe ser realizada de una manera rápida y precisa, pues la información es crucial para poder interactuar correctamente con el ambiente y los objetos que se encuentran en él. Es una representación interna de dicho ambiente producida a partir de información perceptual sobre la configuración física, así como de información cognitiva adquirida en el transcurso vital, y se la denomina "espacio visual" (Loomis, 2003). Si bien nuestra experiencia personal está moldeada por múltiples y complejas interacciones entre las distintas modalidades sensoriales, en este proceso la visión suele ser dominante, ya que brinda información espacial muy detallada, influyendo incluso la percepción y estimación de distancias basadas en otros sentidos como la audición o el tacto (Eimer, 2004).…”

Visuo-Motor Interaction in the Estimation of Distance: Athletes vs. No-Athletes

“…Because, from the point of view of an observer, the distribution of distances of a natural environment presents a maximum of occurrence for very low values (close to one meter) and decays monotonically as the distance increases [11], the observers tend to bias their estimations to smaller values. This idea can be formalized by using the Bayes theorem that states: (1) where P(D) is the a priori probability of distance in the environment, and P(m|D) is the probability to obtain a visual measurement m given the physical distance D, and it is known as the likelihood function, and represents the state of the (visual) system. P(m) is the probability to obtain a measurement m, and it is considered as uniform, and P(D|m) represents the a posteriori probability, i.e.…”

“…The achievement of an appropriate representation of the three-dimensional space, from the twodimensional images projected onto the retina, is a great challenge for the visual system. Such a representation is known as "visual space", and it is constructed from the physical configuration of the space and the available cognitive information [1]. The invariance and the coherence of this space allow to achieve an appropriate "perceptual precision", i.e.…”