Losing sight of the bigger picture: Peripheral field loss compresses representations of space

Three experiments examine how the peripheral visual field (PVF) mediates the development of spatial representations. In Experiment 1 participants learned and were tested on statue locations in a virtual environment while their field-of-view (FOV) was restricted to 40, 20, 10, or 0 (diam). As FOV decreased, overall placement errors, estimated distances, and angular offsets increased. Experiment 2 showed large compressions but no effect of FOV for perceptual estimates of statue locations. Experiment 3 showed an association between FOV size and proprioception influence. These results suggest the PVF provides important global spatial information used in the development of spatial representations.