title: Pitching people with an inversion table: Estimates of body orientation are tipped as much as those of visual surfaces.
abstract: In the current work we investigate people's perception of their own body tilt in the pitch direction. In Experiment 1, we tilted people backward at 1 of 5 different randomly assigned angles using an inversion table. People significantly overestimated the angle at which they were tilted backward at angles from 8° to 45°. The slope of the plotted average overestimates had a gain of 1.46, fitting nicely with previously reported gains of verbal overestimates of visually perceived slant of natural outdoor geographically oriented slopes as well as man-made wooden slopes within and outside of reach in the laboratory. In Experiment 2, we showed participants a 45° line and asked them to indicate when they were positioned at that orientation. Participants again significantly overestimated the angle at which they were tilted backward. This extends work showing that a scale-expanded theory of visual space is multisensory, results in equivalent estimates for both verbal and nonverbal/nonnumeric methods, and can now be expanded to include the perceived orientation of one's own body.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH, 44906, USA. shaffer.247@osu.edu.
authors.forename: Dennis M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Shaffer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH, 44906, USA.
authors.forename: Ally
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH, 44906, USA.
authors.forename: Allyson
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH, 44906, USA.
authors.forename: Phil
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Graves
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH, 44906, USA.
authors.forename: Echoe
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH, 44906, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: McManama
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D018475:Head-Down Tilt / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Pitch; Slant perception; Spatial orientation