The effects of masking on the growth of vibrotactile sensation magnitude and on the amplitude difference limen: A test of the equal sensation magnitude-equal difference limen hypothesis

Gescheider, George A.; Bolanowski, Stanley J.; Zwislocki, J. J.; Hall, Karen; Mascia, Christopher C.

doi:10.1121/1.410290

Cited by 20 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, estimates of the roughness of a series of fine abrasive surfaces may be more compressed under stationary conditions than when lateral movement is allowed. Discrimination performance is not, however, an invariable predictor of the slope of a psychophysical magnitude function (Gescheider, Bolanowski, Zwislocki, Hall, & Mascia, 1994;Zwislocki & Jordan, 1986); an empirical test is needed to determine whether the impoverishment of texture perception that occurs when movement is prevented can also be measured using ratio scaling. We therefore undertook to determine whether the role oflateral movement in texture perception, implied by our discrimination results, could be confirmed by measurements of apparent roughness.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception

Hollins

Risner

2000

Perception & Psychophysics

376

269

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three experiments are reported bearing on Katz's hypothesis that tactile texture perception is mediated by vibrational cues in the case of fine textures and by spatial cues in the case of coarse textures. Psychophysical responses when abrasive surfaces moved across the skin were compared with those obtained during static touch, which does not provide vibrational cues. Experiment 1 used two-interval forced-choice procedures to measure discrimination of surfaces. Fine surfaces that were readily discriminated when moved across the skin became indistinguishable in the absence of movement; coarse surfaces, however, were equally discriminable in movingand stationary conditions. This was shown not to result from any inherently greater difficulty of fine-texture discrimination. Experiments 2 and 3 used free magnitude estimation to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the effect of movement on texture (roughness) perception. Without movement, perception was seriously degraded (the psychophysical magnitude function was flattened) for textures with element sizes below 100 llm; above this point, however, the elimination of movement produced an overall decrease in roughness, but not in the slope of the magnitude function. Thus, two components of stimulation (presumably vibrational and spatial) contribute to texture perception, as Katz maintained; mechanisms for responding to the latter appear to be engaged at texture element sizes down to 100llm, a surprisingly small value.In his classic treatise The World of Touch, David Katz (1925 advanced the view that the tactile perception of the texture of surfaces is a complex process, depending on a "spatial sense" for discernment of coarse textures and a "vibration sense" for an appreciation offiner textures. Katz offered a number of ingenious observations to support his theory: For example, he demonstrated that papers can be discriminated by an observer drawing a wooden rod across them but that wrapping the rod in cloth greatly impairs performance (p. 115). These results suggest the use of vibrational cues. Katz's view, referred to here as the duplex theory oftactile texture perception, is succinctly captured in his statement that surfaces touched very lightly could not be clearly perceived, because "the spatial sense ofthe skin could no longer discern the coarse texture of the materials, and the vibrations necessary for the recognition of fine texture were lost as a result of the minimal friction" (p. 138).

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception

Hollins

Risner

2000

Perception & Psychophysics

376

269

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, the difference in firing rates (measured in rats) evoked by two tastants that are just discriminable (i.e., are one 'just noticeable difference' apart, as measured in humans) is constant across the range of concentrations, as Werner and Mountcastle have found to be the case in tactile intensity discrimination [21]. Note, however, that sensation magnitude cannot be inferred from discriminability [63][64][65].…”

Section: Peripheral Code Of Perceived Intensity In Other Sensory Modamentioning

confidence: 99%

Tactile intensity and population codes

Bensmaı̈a

2008

Behavioural Brain Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An important question in neuroscience is how different aspects of a stimulus are encoded at different stages of neural processing. In this review, I discuss studies investigating the peripheral neural code for perceived intensity in touch. One of the recurrent themes in this line of research is that information about stimulus intensity is encoded in the activity of populations of neurons. Not only is information integrated across afferents of given type, but information is also combined across submodalities to yield a unified percept of stimulus intensity. The convergence of information stemming from multiple submodalities is particularly interesting in light of the fact that tactile these are generally thought to be parallel sensory channels with distinct sensory functions and little cross-channel interactions. I discuss implications of a recently proposed model of intensity coding for psychophysical functions and for the coding of intensity in cortex. I also briefly review the peripheral coding of intensity in other sensory modalities. Perceived intensity and integration within and across submodalitiesIntensity is a basic perceptual dimension in the sense that any two stimuli can be compared along the intensive continuum as long as they impinge upon the same sensory sheet (the retina, the cochlea, the olfactory epithelium, etc.). For instance, the brightness of two objects or the loudness of two sounds can be readily compared (see [1], e.g.). Our experience with tactile stimuli -perceiving a puff of air, a light tap or a strong nudge -suggests that tactile intensity is a unitary percept; however, this belief may not be as straightforward as one might initially suppose. Indeed, the skin is innervated by a variety of receptors, several of which subserve the sense of "discriminative touch," within which perceived (tactile) intensity is subsumed. The retina comprises four types of photoreceptors, so the presence of multiple receptor types is not what separates the sense of touch from its visual counterpart. The important distinction is that input from the four photoreceptors has long been known to converge, even within the retina itself, whereas input from low-threshold mechanoreceptive afferents is thought to remain segregated through at least the first cortical processing stage [2]. In fact, the four populations of low-threshold mechanoreceptive afferents are commonly thought to form the inputs to four distinct sensory channels in touch [3]. However, when contacting everyday objects, all four mechanoreceptive channels are more often than not activated. The study of the perception of intensity allows us to investigate how information stemming from these four channels is combined to yield a unitary percept of stimulus intensity.Address: Krieger 338, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, Phone: (410) Fax: (410) 516-8648, Email: sliman@jhu.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our cust...

show abstract

“…In other words, the discrimination threshold is perceptual sensitivity to physical stimuli. According to literature [16], [17], the discrimination thresholds of the magnitudes of vibrotactile stimuli are approximately 10-20% of the detection thresholds, which has been specified in [18], for a wide range of frequencies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mean values were calculated across the materials. The discrimination thresholds were calculated on the basis of [16], [17], and [18] and are shown in Table II and Fig. 12 Their general profile is a u-shape that reaches the bottom at approximately 200-300 Hz.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wearable Finger Pad Sensor for Tactile Textures Using Propagated Deformation on a Side of a Finger: Assessment of Accuracy

Sato

Okamoto

Matsuura

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Measuring the shear deformation of a finger pad during active haptic exploration of materials is important for analysis of textural sensations and development of tactile texture displays. Thus far, there has been no general methods to measure such deformations for active touch. To create a sensor system, we have been developing a new method for estimating the deformation of a finger pad based on the skin deformation propagated to the radial side of a finger tip. In this study, in order to validate the method, we compared the deformation or its acceleration of finger pad estimated on the basis of the acceleration measured at the radial side and those estimated by the shear force applied to the finger pad while exploring a few types of materials. The estimation errors for the deformations at 40-450 Hz were smaller than human discrimination thresholds, indicating that the accuracy of our method is satisfactory compared with human perceptual sensitivity.

show abstract

The effects of masking on the growth of vibrotactile sensation magnitude and on the amplitude difference limen: A test of the equal sensation magnitude-equal difference limen hypothesis

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception

Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception

Tactile intensity and population codes

Wearable Finger Pad Sensor for Tactile Textures Using Propagated Deformation on a Side of a Finger: Assessment of Accuracy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About