Aging and the visual perception of object size

An experiment evaluated the ability of 30 younger and older adults to visually judge object size under three conditions: (1) full cue, (2) in the dark, with linear perspective, and (3) in complete darkness. Each observer made repeated judgments for the same square stimuli (the task was to adjust a separation until it matched the perceived size of the squares), enabling an evaluation of precision as well as accuracy. The judgments were just as accurate in the dark with linear perspective condition as in the full cue condition, indicating that linear perspective serves as an important source of optical information to support the perception of object size). In contrast, in complete darkness (where linear perspective information was unavailable), the accuracy of the observers’ judgments was poor. Finally, there was no difference in either the accuracy or the precision of the observers’ judgments between the two age groups, despite the fact that the older adults were more than 50 years older than the younger adults (mean age of the younger and older adults was 22.3 and 74.1 years, respectively). The ability to visually perceive object size is well maintained with increasing age, unlike a number of other important visual abilities.