Translating visual art into tactile art to produce equivalent aesthetic experiences.

An argument is put forward to show that visual art may actually be translated into tactile objects that produce equivalent aesthetic experiences for blind or visually impaired people. This is shown by delineating the information required for such a translation in general, demonstrating that such a translation is already achievable from color vision to color vision and theoretically possible from spatial vision to spatial touch, and outlining that an analogous procedure could be applied to aesthetic experience. Limitations of such translations of visual works of art into tactile objects, and implications of such a procedure for artistic experience and education, are also mentioned. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Crossmodal links between vision and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention.

The authors report a series of 6 experiments investigating crossmodal links between vision and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention. When participants were informed that visual and tactile targets were more likely on one side than the other, speeded discrimination responses (continuous vs. pulsed, Experiments 1 and 2; or up vs. down, Experiment 3) for targets in both modalities were significantly faster on the expected side, even though target modality was entirely unpredictable. When participants expected a target on a particular side in just one modality, corresponding shifts of covert attention also took place in the other modality, as evidenced by faster elevation judgments on that side (Experiment 4). Larger attentional effects were found when directing visual and tactile attention to the same position rather than to different positions (Experiment 5). A final study with crossed hands revealed that these visuotactile links in spatial attention apply to common positions in external space. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Haptic exploration in the presence of vision.

Two experiments addressed initiation of haptic exploration to encode object properties when vision is present. Ss compared pairs of objects on designated properties, using only vision or with touch permitted. Touch initiation, reach, contact, and visual responses were timed. With difficult material judgments, touch occurred frequently and was initiated faster than the time to respond by vision alone. With geometric judgments, touch was rarely used and then was initiated at the typical time for a visual response. Imposing a visual preview before allowing touch did not reduce the incidence of touch but did speed its initiation. Results support a model in which preliminary visual processing quickly initiates haptic exploration for material judgments that are visually or semantically difficult. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When seeing doesn't matter: Assessing the after-effects of tactile distractor processing in the blind and the sighted.

Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that people's responses to probe targets previously presented as prime distractors are usually slower than to unrepeated stimuli. Intriguingly, the effect sizes of tactile NP were much larger than the effect sizes for visual NP. We analyzed whether the large tactile NP effect is just a side effect of the higher difficulty when processing tactile compared to visual stimuli. Thus, we analyzed tactile NP in a sample of blind participants and in a control sample of sighted participants. Although the blind participants handled the tactile stimuli with ease, we found no evidence that the size of the tactile NP effect diminished. In two control experiments with sighted participants, we varied the processing difficulty in the visual and tactile modality and found that both modality and processing difficulty had an effect on the size of NP. Taken together, our data show that the difficulty associated with processing tactile stimuli is only partially the reason for the unusual large tactile NP effect. These results suggest that non-spatial tactile distractors are processed and selected quite differently from visual distractors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of texture by vision and touch: Multidimensionality and intersensory integration.

Six experiments, with 224 university students and staff, indicate that there is no fixed dominance hierarchy for the perception of textured patterns and highlight the importance of recognizing the multidimensionality of texture perception. The relative bias between vision and touch was reversed or considerably altered using both discrepancy and nondiscrepancy paradigms. This shift was achieved merely by directing Ss to judge different dimensions of the same textured surface. Exps I, IV, and V showed relatively strong emphasis on visual as opposed to tactual cues regarding the spatial density of raised dot patterns. In contrast, Exps II, III, and VI demonstrated considerably greater emphasis on the tactual as opposed to visual cues when Ss were instructed to judge the roughness of the same surfaces. The results are discussed in terms of a modality appropriateness interpretation of intersensory bias. A weighted average model appeared to described the nature of the intersensory integration process for both spatial density and roughness perception. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An analysis of users' preference on keyboards through ergonomic comparison among four keyboards

The usability of four kinds of keyboards as regards touch and feel was evaluated by measuring the performance and eliciting the preferences of a total of 24 Japanese participants in a test that consisted of typing English text. It was found that quiet keyboards with an indistinct tactile feedback tend to give higher uncorrected error rates than keyboards with a distinct tactile feedback and clicking sound, while no significant difference in throughput was found among the four keyboards. As regards preference, the test participants were divided into two groups: those who preferred keyboards with a distinct tactile feedback and clicking sound, and those who preferred keyboards with an indistinct tactile feedback and no sound. Analysis revealed that these two groups also showed different sensations and preferences with respect to several aspects of the touch and feel of keyboards. This result suggests that suppliers of computer keyboards should provide two kinds of keyboards, with distinct and indistinct tactile key switches, in order to satisfy as many users as possible.     

The effect of textures and grain shape on the shear band formation in rolled F.C.C. metals

In rolled f.c.c. metals, the commonly observed textures are {110}〈001〉, {110}〈112〉, and {112}〈111〉. A theoretical Taylor factor calculation was made to give the influence of these three textures on plastic deformation. The combined effect of textures and grain shape on the shear band formation and fracture in rolled f.c.c. metals were discussed and compared with experimental results. It is concluded that among the three textures studied, the Goss {110}〈001〉 textured grains in rolled f.c.c. metals are easier deformed than the others, which gives an explanation of the form of shear bands usually observed in rolled f.c.c. metals.     

Perceptual conflict between vision and touch

Although most of the studies support the conclusion that a perceptual conflict may be resolved in the visual dominance, a few suggest its prematurity and methodological problems. In the present study, the conflict was made by the instruction and the trick in order to keep the S's naivety, and the degree of conflict was varied. wthe visual comparison (vision), the haptic comparison (touch), the visual-haptic comparison (drawing by a pencil), and the haptic-visual comparison (production by the plasticine) were used as the comparison procedures. The result was that the perceptual conflict was resolved in a compromise between vision and touch. However, as the degree of conflict became greater, the judgements in the conflict tended to depend upon the comparison procedures. And in such a conflict taht the visual size was smaller than the tactual, the vision dominance tended to occur, and vice versa.     

Mind the Gap: Interhemispheric Communication About Emotional Faces.

This study tested the hypothesis that interhemispheric communication about emotional stimuli is influenced by situational factors that alter emotional relevance. Under evaluative or nonevaluative conditions, participants matched angry and happy faces within a single visual field or across opposite visual fields. An overall across-field advantage (AFA) reflected the benefit of sharing information between the hemispheres. The AFA was greater for angry than for happy faces in the evaluation condition but did not differ for angry and happy faces in the no-evaluation condition. Examination of individual differences indicated that high trait evaluation levels of worry were associated with poorer interhemispheric communication of angry faces, supporting a threat-avoidance conception of worry. Thus, both situational factors and individual differences affected interhemispheric communication about emotional faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New directions in touch.

Introduces the special issue on New Directions in Touch, which focuses on a number of critical topics concerning the sense of touch, with invited reviews written by some of the top researchers in the field today. Some of these are traditional topics that have seen impressive advances in recent years, while others are quite new. The intent in highlighting this work is to reflect the increasing excitement in recent years surrounding the exponential increase in highly innovative and diverse research devoted to the sense of touch. There are nine articles in the special issue, covering a wide assortment of topics related to human tactile and haptic sensing and its application, including sensation, perception, cognition and their underlying neural mechanisms, and how basic research on touch has been applied to the design of haptic interfaces for teleoperation and virtual environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Progrés dans la recherche sur le toucher.

Introduces the special issue on New Directions in Touch, which focuses on a number of critical topics concerning the sense of touch, with invited reviews written by some of the top researchers in the field today. Some of these are traditional topics that have seen impressive advances in recent years, while others are quite new. The intent in highlighting this work is to reflect the increasing excitement in recent years surrounding the exponential increase in highly innovative and diverse research devoted to the sense of touch. There are nine articles in the special issue, covering a wide assortment of topics related to human tactile and haptic sensing and its application, including sensation, perception, cognition and their underlying neural mechanisms, and how basic research on touch has been applied to the design of haptic interfaces for teleoperation and virtual environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cognitive and neural correlates of tactile memory.

Tactile memory systems are involved in the storage and retrieval of information about stimuli that impinge on the body surface and objects that people explore haptically. Here, the authors review the behavioral, neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging research on tactile memory. This body of research reveals that tactile memory can be subdivided into a number of functionally distinct neurocognitive subsystems, just as is the case with auditory and visual memory. Some of these subsystems are peripheral and short lasting and others are more central and long lasting. The authors highlight evidence showing that the representation of tactile information interacts with information about other sensory attributes (e.g., visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic) of objects/events that people perceive. This fact suggests that at least part of the neural network involved in the memory for touch might be shared among different sensory modalities. In particular, multisensory/amodal information-processing networks seem to play a leading role in the storage of tactile information in the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Importance of texture-density preferences and motion parallax for visual depth discrimination by rats and chicks.

Tested 193 adult hooded rats and 499 New Hampshire Red chicks on the visual cliff with a nonpreferred textured pattern on the shallow side and a preferred texture projected from the deep side. Both species made more descents to the deep side than they did for control conditions. Increasing visual depths led to fewer deep-side choices for both species, but the rat was more affected by the preferred projected texture than was the chick. Prior studies that have stressed the importance of motion parallax have neglected the dynamic influence of preferred textures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of texture fading in the treatment of food selectivity

Children with feeding disorders often display severe food selectivity. For many of these children, consuming highly textured foods may be aversive or potentially dangerous because of frequent gagging. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the efficacy of texture fading in the treatment of food selectivity displayed by 4 children. Treatment involved the gradual addition of higher textures based on the results of periodic probes. In addition, food acceptance and swallowing were reinforced, while food refusal and food expulsion were placed on extinction. Results showed that all participants successfully advanced to consumption of age-appropriate texture and volume. The results suggest that texture fading with intermittent probes at higher textures may be an effective method for the treatment of food selectivity by texture.     

Numerical discrimination by rats (Rattus norvegicus) using body and vibrissal touch.

Three experiments were performed to test if tactile stimuli could serve as the basis for a numerical discrimination in rats (Rattus norvegicus). In Experiment 1, touch delivered symmetrically to both sides of the animal's body yielded no evidence of numerical discrimination. In Experiment 2, the restriction of tactile cues to one side of the animal's body resulted in marginally better results, although performance remained below conventional levels of significance. In Experiment 3, tactile contact with the animal's vibrissae yielded statistically significant evidence of numerical processing. Subjects learned to enter one arm of a Y-maze when three vibrissal deflections were presented, and the other arm when either two or four stimuli occurred. The demonstration of a two-three-four discrimination extends the use of this relatively complex intermediate number procedure from a previous demonstration in rats involving auditory stimuli (Davis & Albert, 1986) and indicates for the first time in any species that touch may be used as the basis for numerical behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual learning style and learning proficiency: A test of the hypothesis.

Given the potential importance of using modality preference with instruction, the authors tested whether learning style preference correlated with memory performance in each of 3 sensory modalities: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. In Study 1, participants completed objective measures of pictorial, auditory, and tactile learning and learning style self-assessments. The results indicate that objective test performance did not correlate with learning style preference. In Study 2, the authors examined in more detail the information participants used to answer the learning style self-assessment. The findings indicate that participants answered the inventory using general memories and beliefs rather than specific examples of learning in different modalities. These results challenge the hypothesis that individuals learn best with material presented in a particular sensory modality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

振动触觉编码的研究现状

触觉作为人的一种独特的感官通道具有独特的优势，它不仅能最大限度的贴合人体的生理构造，传递硬度、大小、纹理、形状、温度等视听觉无法传递的信息，而且拥有快速准确的特性，触觉不仅可以实现全方位的感知，而且能够有效感知一些很难被视觉或听觉形式表达的更真实复杂的信息，和外界环境进行一系列的交互。振动触觉编码的设计是开发触觉的一个重要途径，也是未来人机交互的一种重要手段。本文从振动触觉感知机理入手，讨论了不同振动参数的振动触觉分辨率和振动信息编码理论，并按照方向导航和文字交互的应用对振动信息编码进行归纳总结，介绍了振动信息编码的实验手段和结论，最后展望了振动信息编码领域未来的发展前景。      

Tactile measures in the structure of intelligence.

This study investigated the relationship of tactile abilities within the framework of a hierarchical structure of mental abilities. Data were analysed from 229 participants who were administered tactile measures from the Dean-Woodcock Sensory Motor Battery along with a battery of conormed cognitive measures representative of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of intelligence. Multiple measures of tactile performance were used including Palm Writing and Object Identification, and each measure included a lateralized measure (i.e., right/left). Factor analytic results suggest tactile measures have a significant relationship with measures of cognitive ability. In this study, tactile measures involving object identification were more related to cognitive measures of visual processing-speed and overall processing speed; whereas, tactile measures involving the recognition of numbers written on the palm of the hand produced high loadings on a separate factor. Results from this study suggest different tactile measures may differentially load on cognitive factors depending on the common processing demands of the tactile and cognitive measures. Suggestions for differentiating common processing demands between tactile and cognitive measures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vision and touch: A reconsideration of conflict between the two senses.

Although many studies have supported I. Rock and J. Victor's (see record 1964-07119-001) conclusion that visual-tactual conflicts will be resolved in favor of vision, the present study with 30 undergraduates presents evidence that methodological problems may have produced a bias in favor of vision. An experimental group examined blocks of wood of several sizes both visually and tactually, while 2 control groups examined the blocks by either vision or touch alone. After exposure to each block, Ss selected a comparison block of equal size from a set of 15 blocks. Group means indicate that experimental Ss made a judgment which was a compromise between their visual and tactual impressions. Closer examination showed that Ss made their judgments conform to either their visual or tactual impressions, and that there was great heterogeneity of response pattern. Results indicate that the generalization of vision as a dominant modality may be premature. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The right visual field advantage and the optimal viewing position effect: On the relation between foveal and parafoveal word recognition.

Recent developments on the optimal viewing position (OVP) effect suggest that it may be caused by the same factors that underlie the right visual field advantage in word recognition. This raises the question of the relationship between foveal and parafoveal word recognition. Three experiments are reported in which participants identified tachistoscopically presented words that were presented randomly in foveal and parafoveal vision. The results show that both the OVP effect and the right visual field advantage for word recognition are part of a larger extended OVP curve that has the shape of a Gaussian distribution with the mode shifted to the left of the center of the stimulus word. The shift of the distribution is a function of word length, but not of presentation duration; it is also slightly moderated by the information value of word beginning and word end. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)