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Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
Published on: April 16, 2014
Evolved navigation theory and horizontal visual illusions
Russell E Jackson1, Chéla R Willey
1Psychology Department, California State University San Marcos, USA. rjackson@csusm.edu
Abstract:
Environmental perception is prerequisite to most vertebrate behavior and its modern investigation initiated the founding of experimental psychology. Navigation costs may affect environmental perception, such as overestimating distances while encumbered (Solomon, 1949). However, little is known about how this occurs in real-world navigation or how it may have evolved. We manipulated the most commonly navigated surfaces with a non-intuitive cost derived from evolved navigation theory. Observers in realistic settings unknowingly overestimated horizontal distances that contained a risk of falling and did so by the relative degree of falling risk. This manipulation produced previously unknown, large magnitude illusions in everyday vision in the environments most commonly navigated by humans. These results bear upon predictions from multiple fundamental theories of visual cognition.
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