A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE ON OVERESTIMATES OF REACHING DISTANCE - DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN PERCEPTUAL AND ANALYTICAL JUDGMENTS

Previous research has shown that perceivers tend to overestimate wheth er an object is within reach. This exploratory study examined the hypo thesis that this overestimate is a result of transforming what is typi cally a perception-action process into an analytical, reflective judgm ent. It was hypothesized that reaching estimates would be more accurat e as analytical processes became less implicated in the judgment. The results indicate that when the judgment of reach was the focal task fo r perceivers, they overestimated their reach; but when the judgments w ere made a subsidiary part of a primary task, with perceivers judging how reachable an object was in order to carry out some other task, the ir estimates of perceived reach were very accurate. These results supp ort the hypothesis and suggest that perception-action processes should be conceptualized as a complex mode of functioning that can operate i ndependently of analytical processes.