Texture perception: studies of intersensory organization using a discrepancy paradigm, and visual versus tactual psychophysics.

Abstract

Three experiments were performed involving the perception of surface texture. Experiment 1 indicated that when vision and touch are presented with discrepant information concerning texture, the two senses appear to weight the information about equally. Moreover, Experiment 2 showed that using touch, vision, or touch and vision, subjects performed a texture identification task with comparable matching accuracy and precision. Experiment 3 demonstrated that using the same three modes, subjects performed a magnitude estimation task similarly, in terms of magnitude estimates of roughness, the rates of growth of perceived roughness, and response precision. The comparability of the two senses in texture-related tasks may underlie the relatively equal compromise between discrepant sources of texture information demonstrated in Experiment (modality superiority interpretation). Such a compromise is somewhat different from that commonly reported in the sensory conflict literature. The relative weighting of multiple sources of sensory information about surface texture was also considered in terms of a directed-attention interpretation of intersensory organization.