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Haptic face aftereffect
1Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1, Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan; e-mail: kmat@riec.tohoku.ac.jp ;
Abstract:
Face aftereffects (FAEs) are generally thought of as being a visual phenomenon. However, recent studies have shown that people can haptically recognize a face. Here, I report a haptic, rather than visual, FAE. By using three-dimensional facemasks, I found that haptic exploration of the facial expression of the facemask causes a subsequently touched neutral facemask to be perceived as having the opposite facial expression. The results thus suggest that FAEs can also occur in haptic perception of faces.
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