Haptic perception

Abstract

Fueled by novel applications, interest in haptic perception is growing. This paper provides an overview of the state of the art of a number of important aspects of haptic perception. By means of touch we can not only perceive quite different material properties, such as roughness, compliance, friction, coldness and slipperiness, but we can also perceive spatial properties, such as shape, curvature, size and orientation. Moreover, the number of objects we have in our hand can be determined, either by counting or subitizing. All these aspects will be presented and discussed in this paper. Although our intuition tells us that touch provides us with veridical information about our environment, the existence of prominent haptic illusions will show otherwise. Knowledge about haptic perception is interesting from a fundamental viewpoint, but it also is of eminent importance in the technological development of haptic devices. At the end of this paper, a few recent applications will be presented. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:357-374. DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1238 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Response Modality vs. Target Modality: Sensory Transformations and Comparisons in Cross-modal Slant Matching Tasks

“…The results in the unimodal conditions (HH and VV) were consistent with previous studies of haptic parallelity 34 , 41 and visual slant perception 26 , 28 in which the haptic bias reflected the strong influence of an egocentric RF, and the visual bias showed systematic overestimation of steepness when the test location was above the reference location. Similar to the findings of Volcic, Kappers and Koenderink 31 , the deviation of HH condition increased with the distance between the two surfaces.…”

Getting the point: Tracing worked examples enhances learning

“…Therefore, human hands can gather a wide range of information about the properties of objects and even can judge a small number of items without counting (Kappers & Tiest, 2013). While visual perception provides global and surface information, the highly functional perception of the hands allows people to obtain detailed information about objects or events.…”

Neonatal Assessment Manual Score: Is There a Role of a Novel, Structured Touch-Based Evaluation in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit?

“…The sensitivity of the hand LTMs and the specialization of the haptic system together with the accumulated professional knowledge in the NICU setting will contribute to effective interaction between top-down predictions and bottom-incoming sensory signals processed and modulated at different levels of the nervous system hierarchy. It is therefore plausible that an operator may feel the changes in the newborn's body volume, evaluating the compliance of the newborn's tissues, that is, perceiving the resistance put up to the applied pressures and the changes in tissue softness (51,52,55).…”

“…It determines the softness of an object: it also depends on the amount of contact area between the object and the hand, and the distance that a fingertip penetrates an object ( 53 – 55 ). The object compliance can also be felt at a distance—without direct contact—if something lays between the hand and the object, for example, a stylus used for reaching a distant object ( 55 , 56 ). For the infant's body, the body itself can be the “stylus” to feel the compliance of internal tissues and how the applied pressure spreads throughout the tissues.…”