Visuo-motor interaction in the estimation of distance: athletes vs. no athletes

Abstract

To build a representation of the space surrounding us with an appropriate perceptual precision, our brain has to obtain the distance information from a variety of cues that are present in the scene. But these data are affected in some way by our self-motion perception. Using an indirect method of distance estimation, we investigated the effect of the visuo-motor interactions on the perception of distance in two groups of observers, one of athletes and other of no-athletes. The results showed a difference between the distances obtained in static and dynamic conditions and also in the magnitude of the absolute errors of each group. The data were modeled and interpreted in terms of the Bayesian framework of perceptual inference.