Visual experience and the haptic horizontal-vertical illusion

Abstract

An experiment was conducted with blind individuals to examine the effect of visual experlence on the horizontal-vertical illusion In touch. Groups of early blind, late blind, and low vision subjects examined tangible raised-line drawings of L and Inverted T figures. A tangible sliding ruler was used for size estimates. The results showed that the horizontal-vertical illusion was not dependent upon visual experience or visual imagery, since similar illusory overestimation of the verticals occurred with early blind, late blind and low vision subjects.

The Influence of Exploration Mode, Orientation, and Configuration on the Haptic Müller-Lyer Illusion

“…Most sighted subjects spontaneously use tracing with the index finger when feeling raised-line forms (Symmons and Richardson 2000), but this may not be an optimal strategy. Recently, however, many blind subjects objected to the use of one finger for tracing lines in studies of haptic illusions, and thought that they would be able to make more accurate judgments of extent using grasping or multiple fingers (eg Heller et al 2002aHeller et al , 2002bHeller et al , 2003bHeller et al , 2004. One might predict that illusory misperception could derive from the adoption of poor exploration strategies, especially by subjects unskilled in the use of touch (see Gibson 1966Gibson , 1979Heller et al 2004).…”

Using traditional horizontal-vertical illusion figures and single lines to directly compare haptics and vision

“…The degree of illusion in both vision and haptics has been found to be influenced by stimulus size Jacqui.Howell@monash.edu became equal in length to the horizontal. But, these same IEEE World Haptics Conference 2013 14-18 April, Daejeon, Korea 978-1-4799-0088-6/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE [8,12,13,14,15]. Therefore a small and large stimulus size is needed in order to reveal any differences between attributed to size.…”