Abstract
<p>Our study investigated whether perceptual sensitivity for affordant objects is modulated within the illusory spaces. This was done using a horizontal Ponzo illusion which creates the perception of illusory peripersonal and extrapersonal space while holding the retinal size constant. In two experiments, the participants completed a visual search task in which targets were presented in either of the illusory spaces. The target was either an affordant object (a mug) or a non-affordant geometric shape (a triangle). In the first experiment, we found that the perceptual sensitivity for the affordant object was better in illusory far space, while perceptual sensitivity for the non affordant shape remained relatively stable across the spaces. However, when the illusion's direction was reversed in the second experiment to see if the findings were a result of visual hemifield or not, the effect of the affordant object disappeared. Together, these findings suggest that the role of spatial context on affordant object perception is inconsistent across visual field arrangements and may reflect an interaction between affordance processing and lateral attentional biases rather than a general perceptual advantage of PPS.</p>