ERIC Number: EJ724529
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2005-Dec
Pages: 11
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-2626
EISSN: N/A
What Aspects of Vision Facilitate Haptic Processing?
Millar, Susanna; Al-Attar, Zainab
Brain and Cognition, v59 n3 p258-268 Dec 2005
We investigate how vision affects haptic performance when task-relevant visual cues are reduced or excluded. The task was to remember the spatial location of six landmarks that were explored by touch in a tactile map. Here, we use specially designed spectacles that simulate residual peripheral vision, tunnel vision, diffuse light perception, and total blindness. Results for target locations differed, suggesting additional effects from adjacent touch cues. These are discussed. Touch with full vision was most accurate, as expected. Peripheral and tunnel vision, which reduce visuo-spatial cues, differed in error pattern. Both were less accurate than full vision, and significantly more accurate than touch with diffuse light perception, and touch alone. The important finding was that touch with diffuse light perception, which excludes spatial cues, did not differ from touch without vision in performance accuracy, nor in location error pattern. The contrast between spatially relevant versus spatially irrelevant vision provides new, rather decisive, evidence against the hypothesis that vision affects haptic processing even if it does not add task-relevant information. The results support optimal integration theories, and suggest that spatial and non-spatial aspects of vision need explicit distinction in bimodal studies and theories of spatial integration.
Descriptors: Cues, Vision, Tactual Perception, Spatial Ability, Manipulative Materials, Simulation, Learning Modalities, Sensory Integration, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A