A Survey on Tactile Change Blindness

While vibrotactile displays continue to gain popularity, it remains that the phenomenon of tactile change blindness negatively impacts the human ability to detect changes between and within tactile signals. This paper surveys the research literature on tactile change detection and blindness under various parameters, including the number of tactors used, the intensity and length of the stimulus, and whether distractors between stimuli (i.e., transients) were used during experimentation, among others. The goal of this survey is to summarize what has been done in an attempt to better understand the parameters that exacerbate tactile change blindness and identify potential areas of future research. When such an understanding is reached, the design of haptic and multimodal displays may ideally be improved.