Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.

When assessing the roughness of textures, no single sensory modality universally dominates perception. Instead, the task and stimuli critically determine to what extent a given sense is favoured. We report a visuotactile texture assessment experiment, consisting of the speeded discrimination of roug...

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Main Authors: Guest, S, Spence, C
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2003
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author Guest, S
Spence, C
author_facet Guest, S
Spence, C
author_sort Guest, S
collection OXFORD
description When assessing the roughness of textures, no single sensory modality universally dominates perception. Instead, the task and stimuli critically determine to what extent a given sense is favoured. We report a visuotactile texture assessment experiment, consisting of the speeded discrimination of roughened textile samples, in the presence of a congruent or an incongruent textile distractor. When discriminating between samples, visual assessment of textile roughness was modulated by incongruous tactile distractors, but not vice versa, even when visual distractors were more discriminable than tactile targets. This asymmetry in interference suggests that 'modality appropriateness' is not purely a function of the discriminative ability of a sensory modality, but that ecological validity may play a role in determining the more 'appropriate' sense for a given task. Results are discussed in relation to the claim that the assessment of textiles is more ecologically suited to touch than to vision.
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spelling oxford-uuid:fdd864a9-31ab-4640-96de-1a58d1eea0d52022-03-27T13:31:57ZTactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:fdd864a9-31ab-4640-96de-1a58d1eea0d5EnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2003Guest, SSpence, CWhen assessing the roughness of textures, no single sensory modality universally dominates perception. Instead, the task and stimuli critically determine to what extent a given sense is favoured. We report a visuotactile texture assessment experiment, consisting of the speeded discrimination of roughened textile samples, in the presence of a congruent or an incongruent textile distractor. When discriminating between samples, visual assessment of textile roughness was modulated by incongruous tactile distractors, but not vice versa, even when visual distractors were more discriminable than tactile targets. This asymmetry in interference suggests that 'modality appropriateness' is not purely a function of the discriminative ability of a sensory modality, but that ecological validity may play a role in determining the more 'appropriate' sense for a given task. Results are discussed in relation to the claim that the assessment of textiles is more ecologically suited to touch than to vision.
spellingShingle Guest, S
Spence, C
Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.
title Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.
title_full Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.
title_fullStr Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.
title_full_unstemmed Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.
title_short Tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures.
title_sort tactile dominance in speeded discrimination of textures
work_keys_str_mv AT guests tactiledominanceinspeededdiscriminationoftextures
AT spencec tactiledominanceinspeededdiscriminationoftextures