Haptically perceived softness of deformable stimuli can be manipulated by applying external forces during the exploration

The perception of softness is the result of the integration of information provided by multiple cutaneous and kinesthetic signals. The relative contributions of these signals to the combined percept of softness was not yet addressed directly. We transmitted subtle external vertical forces to the exploring human finger during the exploration of deformable silicone rubber stimuli to dissociate the force estimates provided by the kinesthetic signals and the efference copy from cutaneous force estimates. This manipulation introduced a conflict between the cutaneous and the kinesthetic/efference copy information on softness. We measured Points of Subjective Equality (PSE) of manipulated references to stimuli which were explored without external forces. PSEs shifted as a linear function of external force in predicted directions - to higher compliances with pushing and to lower compliances with pulling force. We found relative contribution of kinesthetic/efference copy information to perceived softness being 23% for rather hard and 29% for rather soft stimuli. Our results suggest that an integration of the kinesthetic/efference copy information and cutaneous information with constant weights underlies softness perception. The kinesthetic/efference copy information seems to be slightly more important for the perception of rather soft stimuli

Haptically perceived softness of deformable stimuli can be manipulated by applying external forces during the exploration

<p>The perception of softness is the result of the integration of information provided by multiple cutaneous and kinesthetic signals. The relative contributions of these signals to the combined percept of softness was not yet addressed directly. We transmitted subtle external vertical forces to the exploring human finger during the exploration of deformable silicone rubber stimuli to dissociate the force estimates provided by the kinesthetic signals and the efference copy from cutaneous force estimates. This manipulation introduced a conflict between the cutaneous and the kinesthetic/efference copy information on softness. We measured Points of Subjective Equality (PSE) of manipulated references to stimuli which were explored without external forces. PSEs shifted as a linear function of external force in predicted directions - to higher compliances with pushing and to lower compliances with pulling force. We found relative contribution of kinesthetic/efference copy information to perceived softness being 23% for rather hard and 29% for rather soft stimuli. Our results suggest that an integration of the kinesthetic/efference copy information and cutaneous information with constant weights underlies softness perception. The kinesthetic/efference copy information seems to be slightly more important for the perception of rather soft stimuli.</p> <p>Metzger, A., & Drewing, K. (2015). Haptically perceived softness of deformable stimuli can be manipulated by applying external forces during the exploration. In World Haptics Conference (WHC), 2015 IEEE (pp. 75-81). IEEE.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Zip file contains all data relative to the publication. The data of each participant is contained in a separate folder. This folder contains a *.raw file for each session of the experiment and a "data" folder, which contains movement trajectories (*.trj files) and the staircase reversals for each condition (*.pse files) in separate folders for each session.</p> <p>A description of the variables is contained in the file VARIABLE_CODES.txt</p

Integration of serial sensory information in haptic perception of softness.

Redundant estimates of an environmental property derived simultaneously from different senses or cues are typically integrated according to the maximum likelihood estimation model (MLE): Sensory estimates are weighted according to their reliabilities, maximizing the percept’s reliability. Mechanisms underlying the integration of sequentially derived estimates from one sense are less clear. Here we investigate the integration of serially sampled redundant information in softness perception. We developed a method to manipulate haptically perceived softness of silicone rubber stimuli during bare-finger exploration. We then manipulated softness estimates derived from single movement segments (indentations) in a multisegmented exploration to assess their contributions to the overall percept. Participants explored two stimuli in sequence, using 2–5 indentations, and reported which stimulus felt softer. Estimates of the first stimulus’s softness contributed to the judgments similarly, whereas for the second stimulus estimates from later compared to earlier indentations contributed less. In line with unequal weighting, the percept’s reliability increased with increasing exploration length less than was predicted by the MLE model. This pattern of results is well explained by assuming that the representation of the first stimulus fades when the second stimulus is explored, which fits with a neurophysiological model of perceptual decisions (Deco, Rolls, & Romo, 2010)