Ipsilateral versus bilateral placement of a tactile vocoder display

A tactile vocoder was evaluated in a word recognition task. The vocoder consisted of a pair of two-dimensional vibrotactile arrays on which subjects placed their fingers. For one group of subjects, the two arrays contacted two fingers on the same hand (ipsilateral condition); for the second group, the arrays contacted two fingers on opposite hands (bilateral condition). Performance was better in the bilateral condition; however, the rate at which words were acquired, even in the bilateral condition, was less than that reported by Brooks and Frost [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 74, 34-39 (1983)] with a tactile vocoder placed on the arm.