Experimental and Theoretical Researches of Fine Surface-Texture Discrimination Ability in Tactile Sensation.

本研究由三个部分组成。首先是理论研究，将精细表面纹理识别置于触觉信息处理系统中。第二项研究是为了证明幅度信息假设的有效性而设计的实验，该实验认为被试利用表面不均匀度的幅度信息来识别细小的表面纹理。第三个研究由两个实验组成。本研究的目的是探讨空间累积效应和皮肤温度对精细表面纹理识别能力的影响。研究发现触觉信息加工系统可分为四个子系统，这些子系统对触觉信息的加工相互独立。精细表面纹理识别系统是四个子系统中的一个。在第二项研究中，进行了山脊高度判别实验。当被试利用刺激的振幅信息识别脊高时，脊高的差阈值与精细表面纹理的差阈值相同。实验结果支持幅度信息假说。第三项研究表明，精细表面纹理识别任务存在明显的空间累加现象，精细表面纹理识别任务的阈值差异不存在温度依赖性。

This study consists of three researches. The first research was a theoretical one in wihch the fine surface-texture discrimination was situated in the tactile information processing system. The second research was an experiment designed to prove the validity of the amplitude information hypothesis, in which it was asserted that the subjects discriminated the fine surface texures using the amplitude information of surface unevenness. The third research was composed of two experiments. The purpose of this research was to investigate the spatial summation effects and the skin temperature effects on the discrimination ability of fine surface textures.The first research revealed that the tactile information processing system was classified into four sub-systems which showed mutually independent processing of the information. The fine surface-texture discrimination system was one of the four subsystems. In the second research the experiment of ridge height discrimination was performed. If the subjects discriminated the ridge heights using the amplitude information of the stimuli, the values of the difference thresholds of the ridge heights were the same as the difference threshold values of fine surface-textures. The results of the experiment supported the amplitude information hypothesis. The third research showed that the clear spatial summation was observed in the fine surface-texture discrimination tasks and that there existed little temperature dependent changes in the difference thresholds of fine surface-texture discrimination tasks.