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04:40
Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator (TSPAS)
Published on: July 30, 2020
Factors Influencing Haptic Perception of Complex Shapes
Jonathan M Ehrich1, Martha Flanders, John F Soechting
1J.M. Ehrich is with the Graduate Program in Neurobiology and Behavior, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail: jonathan.ehrich@gmail.com . M. Flanders and J.F. Soechting are with the Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: flan001@umn.edu , soech001@umn.edu.
IEEE Transactions on Haptics
|January 6, 2009
Summary
Human touch perception simplifies complex shapes into basic geometric forms. Expectations and prior knowledge strongly influence how we interpret tactile information from objects.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Object exploration via arm movement and somatosensation is a sequential process.
- This process is influenced by memory and expectations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that object exploration involves breaking shapes into component primitives.
- To investigate how the brain synthesizes haptically sensed shapes.
Main Methods:
- Human subjects explored shapes composed of semicircular arcs, quarter circles, and quarter ellipses.
- Perception was reported via a visual display.
- Experiments involved varying offsets of semicircular arcs.
Main Results:
- Subjects perceived series of semicircular arcs as two distinct semicircles.
- Subjects frequently failed to detect quarter circles or ellipses.
- Participants' perception was consistent with interpreting shapes as two semicircles.
Conclusions:
- Haptic shape synthesis is biased towards simple geometric primitives.
- Expectations significantly influence the interpretation of tactile shape information.
- The brain may simplify complex tactile inputs into more manageable, expected forms.
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