WHEN NEAR BECOMES FAR Figure 1. Panel A: the separate-workspace condition. Frame 1 shows Participant 1 reaching while Participant 2 observes. The black square is the target, the white square the obstacle. Between Frames 1 and 2, both participants have their eyes closed. The experimenter removes Participant 1’s blue set of objects and places Participant 2’s yellow objects. Frame 2 shows Participant 2’s reach after their eyes have been opened. Panel B: the shared-workspace condition. The trial is the same, except for Frames 2 and 4, which show that both participants observe the workspace being moved between them. They both have their eyes open as the workspace and blocks are moved. After the workspace has been moved, participants close their eyes while the experimenter positions the blocks for the next reach (just before Frames 3 and 5). To view a colour version of this ﬁgure, please see the online issue of the Journal. study in return for course credits. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Procedure and design Both participants used their right hands. They were seated at 90° to each other on two sides of a table. Each participant had their own obstacle (4.5 × 4.5 cm, by 18 cm high) and target block (3 × 2 cm, by 9 cm high); one participant had a yellow obstacle and a yellow target, the other a blue set. Each participant also had a thin (12-mm) A3- sized (420 mm × 297 mm) wooden tablet work THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (7) 1243