Temporal Structure in Haptic Signaling Under a Cooperative Task

Abstract

Haptic communication between humans plays an important role in society. Although this form of communication is ubiquitous at all levels of society and of human development, little is known about how synchronized coordination of motion between two persons leads to higher-order cognitive functions used in communication. In this study, we developed a novel experimental paradigm of a coin-collecting task in which participants used their hands to control a rod to jointly collect the coins on the screen. We characterized the haptic interactions between paired participants while they were taking part in a cooperative task. The individual participants first completed this task on their own and then with a randomly assigned partner for the cooperative task. Single participant experiments were used as a baseline to compare results of the paired participants. Forces applied to the rod were translated to four possible haptic states which encode the combination of the haptic interactions. As a next step, pairs of consecutive haptic states were then combined into 16 possible haptic signals which were classified in terms of their temporal patterns using a Tsallis q-exponential function. For paired participants, 80% of the haptic signals could be fit by the Tsallis q-exponential. On the other hand, only 30% of the signals found in the single-participant trials could be fit by the Tsallis q-exponential. This shows a clear difference in the temporal structures of haptic signals when participants are interacting with each other and when they are not. We also found a large difference in the number of haptic signals used by paired participants and singles. Single participants only used 1/4 of the possible haptic signals. Paired participants, on the other hand, used more than half of the possible signals. These results suggest that temporal structures present in haptic communication could be linked to the emergence of language at an evolutionary level.

Simultaneous Learning against to Sequential Learning via Haptic Interaction

“…In the light of the previous study 30 , we, also, identified haptic states to further understand the force interactions. As can be seen from Fig.…”

“…It is important to note that when paired participants apply a force at the same time to interact with their partner and environment, a haptic channel is created. Based on previous study 30 , we quantified the following outcome measure:…”

“…Haptic State: A combination of binary force to identify the haptic interaction between paired participants. To determine the haptic states 30 , first, the force data was filtered using a low pass filter function in MATLAB with a cut off frequency of 25 Hz. The first 250-millisecond of each trial was discarded to remove the noise caused by starting to manipulate the end-effector of the haptic device.…”

Inter-personal motor interaction is facilitated by hand pairing

“…It has been speculated that the internal force in inter-personal coordination could be a means to form a ‘haptic channel’ that facilitates haptic communication for enabling estimation of the partner’s goal 7 , 11 , 21 – 23 , such that it could compensate for lack of complete information about the other agent’s effector. A recent study found that the temporal structure of haptic signals is much more complex in dyads than that found in bimanual coordination 24 . Our finding of strong correlation between internal force and inter-agent movement delay provides additional evidence in support of the above theory, suggesting better action/perception coupling via haptic communication is associated with larger inter-personal forces.…”

A Comprehensive Introduction to Healthcare Data Analytics

“…Holder, Krishnamurthi, and Theadom [24] have effectively shown the contrasting results that occur when persons who have had a stroke engage in goaloriented activities that are directly connected to tangible items, as opposed to engaging in activities with more conceptual objectives. Thorne et al [25] investigated a task where participants used one hand to collect coins from a table and transfer them to the other hand. Both able-bodied individuals and stroke patients participated in the study, sometimes using money and at other times imitating the action without currency.…”