Objective v.s. Projective

This view of perspective offers an explanation for another otherwise paradoxical but familiar property of perceived space whereby more distant objects are perceived to be both smaller, and yet at the same time to be perceived as undiminished in size. This corresponds to the difference in subject's reports depending on whether they are given objective v.s. projective instruction (Coren et al., 1994. p. 500) in how to report their observations, showing that both types of information are available perceptually. This duality in size perception is often described as a cognitive compensation for the foreshortening of perspective, as if the perceptual representation of more distant objects is indeed smaller, but is somehow labeled with the correct size as some kind of symbolic tag representing objective size attached to each object in perception. However this kind of explanation is misleading, for the objective measure of size is not a discrete quantity attached to individual objects, but is more of a continuum, or gradient of difference between objective and projective size, that varies monotonically as a function of distance from the percipient. In other words, this phenomenon is best described as a warping of the space itself within which the objects are represented, so that objects that are warped coherently along with the space in which they are embedded appear undistorted perceptually.