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A variety of attentional and perceptual changes occur in peri-hand space, including increases in visual temporal acuity. These changes in cognition have been related to an increase in magnocellular visual processing. Other magnocellular-related processes have been shown to enhance temporal sensitivity and lead to time overestimation. We hypothesized that a similar slowing of time perception would occur in peri-hand space. To this end, we had participants complete either a temporal bisection task or a verbal time estimation task with their hands near to or far from the test stimuli. Contrary to our predictions, we found no differences in time perception in peri-hand space. We situate our findings within the context of a contemporaneous study by Qi, Wang, He, and Du (2019), which produced conflicting results when using a temporal reproduction task to investigate the same phenomenon. The disparate results might relate to the fragility of peri-hand effects and/or to the tasks tapping into different aspects of time perception. Further research will be needed to fully elucidate the nuances of peri-hand space and temporal processing.

Recent research has shown that being able to interact with an object causes it to be perceived as being closer than objects that cannot be interacted with. In the present study, we examined whether that compression of perceived space would be experienced by people who simply observed such interactions by others with no intention of performing the action themselves. Participants judged the distance to targets after observing an actor reach to an otherwise unreachable target with a tool (Experiment 1) or illuminate a distant target with a laser pointer (Experiment 2). Observing either type of interaction caused a compression of perceived space, revealing that a person's perception of space can be altered through mere observation. These results indicate that shared representations between an actor and observer are engaged at the perceptual level easily and perhaps automatically, even in the absence of cooperation or an observer's own intention to interact.