A Method for Extraction of Visual Expectation Effect on Surface Texture (A Case of Visual Expectation Effect on Tactile Roughness Perception of Plastic Texture)

Abstract

To perceive a quality of a surface texture, people often switch different sensory modalities through an interaction with a product, e.g., we see and then touch a product surface. In such modality transitions, people expect tactile quality of a product from its appearance before touching. Present authors previously found that such visual expectation affects its tactile perception, and called the effect visual expectation effect. The authors demonstrated the existence of the effect from a results of a sensory evaluation experiment with combinations of visual and tactile texture samples that are synthesized using a half-mirror. However, the method used in the previous work had problems in qualification of the effect. To design texture quality with the visual expectation effect, engineers need to know the extent of the effect based on a physical value. In this paper, we proposed a quantification method for the visual expectation effect. The method maps tactile perception with a visual prediction onto a tactile scale without the visual expectation. In the method, evaluators compare samples synthesized using a half-mirror with a set of real samples used as a tactile scale, and select real samples that corresponds to the synthesized samples. With the method, we demonstrated a degree of visual expectation effect on tactile roughness perception of plastic textures.