Aging and the visual perception of exocentric distance

•In-depth spatial intervals were perceived to be shorter than frontal intervals.•Older adults' distance judgments were more accurate than those of younger adults.•The precision of younger and older adults' repeated distance judgments was similar.

The ability of 18 younger and older adults to visually perceive exocentric distances was evaluated. The observers judged the extent of fronto-parallel and in-depth spatial intervals at a variety of viewing distances from 50 cm to 164.3 cm. Most of the observers perceived in-depth intervals to be significantly smaller than fronto-parallel intervals, a finding that is consistent with previous studies. While none of the individual observers' judgments of exocentric distance were accurate, the judgments of the older observers were significantly more accurate than those of the younger observers. The precision of the observers' judgments across repeated trials, however, was not affected by age. The results demonstrate that increases in age can produce significant improvements in the visual ability to perceive the magnitude of exocentric distances.