How Close Is Close Enough? A Multimodal Analysis of Temporal Matching Between Visual and Tactile Signaling

Abstract

Research has shown beneficial performance gains from concurrent multimodal presentation of visual and tactile signaling. Studies have also suggested the importance of closely matching or emulating the spatial characteristics of tactile signaling to its visual counterpart, resulting in intuitive tactile signals that are easily learned and that provide immediate benefits in the absence or concurrent presentation of visual signaling. The purpose for this study was to inform display design regarding how closely the tactile signaling should match the visual signaling temporally, before the observer detects the difference. Participants observed a visual signal presentation of six different circular patterns, that spatially matched a concurrent tactile presentation, with the visual presentation being temporally faster, slower, or the same speed as the tactile presentation. Results showed that participants were better at identifying a difference between the visual and tactile stimuli when the visual stimuli were faster. The incremental nature of the faster and slower visual presentations results in helpful guidelines for multimodal display design on how perceptible the temporal difference is between tactile and visual modalities.