Which strategy people use to guide locomotor interception remains unclear despite considerable research and the importance of an answer with ramification into the heuristics and biases debate. Because the constant bearing (CB) strategy corresponds to the target-heading (CTH) strategy with an additional constraint, these two strategies can be confounded experimentally. But, the two strategies are distinct in the information they require: while the CTH strategy only requires access to the relative angle between the direction of motion and the target, the CB strategy requires access to a stable allocentric reference frame. Here, we manipulated the visual information about allocentric reference frames in three virtual environments and asked participants to steer a car to intercept a moving target. Participants’ interception paths showed different degrees of curvature and their target-heading angles were approximately constant, consistent with the CTH strategy. By contrast, the target’s bearing angle continuously changed in all participants except one. This particular participant produced linear interception paths with little change in the target’s bearing angle, seemingly consistent with both strategies. This participant continued this pattern of steering even in the environment without any visual information about allocentric reference frames. Therefore, this pattern of steering is attributed to the CTH strategy rather than the CB strategy. The overall results add important evidence for the conclusion that locomotor interception is better accounted for by the CTH strategy and that experimentally observing a straight interception trajectory with a constant bearing angle is not sufficient evidence for the CB strategy.

尽管进行了大量研究并且答案的重要性与启发式和偏见辩论有关，但人们使用哪种策略来指导运动拦截仍不清楚。由于恒定方位 (CB) 策略对应于具有附加约束的目标航向 (CTH) 策略，因此这两种策略可以通过实验混淆。但是，这两种策略在它们需要的信息方面是不同的：CTH 策略只需要访问运动方向和目标之间的相对角度，而 CB 策略需要访问稳定的同心参考系。在这里，我们在三个虚拟环境中操纵了有关异心参考系的视觉信息，并要求参与者驾驶汽车以拦截移动目标。参与者的拦截路径表现出不同程度的曲率，他们的目标航向角近似恒定，与 CTH 策略一致。相比之下，除了一个参与者之外，所有参与者的目标方位角都在不断变化。这个特定的参与者产生了线性拦截路径，目标的方位角几乎没有变化，这似乎与两种策略一致。即使在没有任何关于异心参考系的视觉信息的环境中，该参与者也继续这种转向模式。因此，这种转向模式归因于 CTH 策略而不是 CB 策略。