Haptic integration of distance and curvature V Panday, W Bergmann Tiest, A Kappers |
|---|
Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
|
| We investigated how curvature and distance between the fingers are combined in haptic discrimination of shapes. In this experiment, we asked subjects to explore three types of objects between their thumb and index finger. In the first condition, the objects consisted of two flat surfaces that only differed in the distance between the surfaces. In the second condition, the objects consisted of two curved surfaces with the same maximum distance between the surfaces. These objects differed only in curvature. In the third condition, the objects differed in both distance and curvature, in such a way that they formed cylinders with a circular cross-section. In each condition, subjects had to discriminate between two objects that differed in either distance, curvature or both. We found that fraction correct for both condition 1 (only distance) and condition 2 (only curvature) were significantly lower than for condition 3 (both distance and curvature). There was no significant difference between conditions 1 and 2. This indicates that when curvature and distance are combined, discrimination improves. [This work has been supported by the European Commission with the Collaborative Project no. 248587, "THE Hand Embodied", within the FP7-ICT-2009-4-2-1 program "Cognitive Systems and Robotics"] |
| Up Home |
|---|