Vibrotactile localization on the arm: Effects of place, space, and age
- This study and the preparation of this manuscript was supported by NIH Grant DC 00076 and ONR Grant N00014-95-1-0387 to Princeton University, R.W.C., P.I. The authors express their appreciation to Lauren Cesaro, Heather Stamberger, and Steven Cholewiak for their assistance in collecting and processing the data from these experiments and to Carl E. Sherrick for his constructive comments on the manuscript. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to R. W. Cholewiak or A. A. Collins, Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1010 (e-mail: rcholewi{at}princeton.edu).
Abstract
Although tactile acuity has been explored for touch stimuli, vibrotactile resolution on the skin has not. In the present experiments, we explored the ability to localize vibrotactile stimuli on a linear array of tactors on the forearm. We examined the influence of a number of stimulus parameters, including the frequency of the vibratory stimulus, the locations of the stimulus sites on the body relative to specific body references or landmarks, the proximity among driven loci, and the age of the observer. Stimulus frequency and age group showed much less of an effect on localization than was expected. The position of stimulus sites relative to body landmarks and the separation among sites exerted the strongest influence on localization accuracy, and these effects could be mimicked by introducing an “artificial” referent into the tactile array.
Footnotes
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- Received November 12, 2002.
- Accepted March 19, 2003.
- Copyright 2003 Psychonomic Society, Inc.
