The tactile perception of stimulus orientation
The tactile perception of stimulus orientation
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DOI：
10.1080/08990220701830662
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发表时间：
2008-01-01
影响因子：
0.9
通讯作者：
Craig, J. C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bensmaia, S. J.;Hsiao, S. S.;Craig, J. C.
对视觉系统的研究表明，在形式处理的早期阶段，刺激被表示为一组轮廓，并且这些局部轮廓的一个关键特征是它们的方向。在这里，我们描述了人类观察者识别或区分呈现给远端指垫的条和边缘的方向的能力。这些实验是使用 400 个探头刺激器进行的，该刺激器使我们能够在各种条件下灵活地提供刺激。方向阈值平均约为 20 度，在刺激呈现模式（扫描或缩进）、刺激幅度、扫描速度和不同刺激类型（条形或边缘）之间仅略有变化。研究发现，对于相似纵横比、对比度和大小的刺激，触觉定向敏锐度比视觉定向敏锐度差。这一结果与两个系统的等效空间敏锐度（在周围神经支配密度设定的极限下）以及触觉和视觉字母识别的研究结果形成鲜明对比，这些研究表明，当刺激适当缩放时，这两种模式会产生可比的性能。
Studies of the visual system suggest that, at an early stage of form processing, a stimulus is represented as a set of contours and that a critical feature of these local contours is their orientation. Here, we characterize the ability of human observers to identify or discriminate the orientation of bars and edges presented to the distal fingerpad. The experiments were performed using a 400-probe stimulator that allowed us to flexibly deliver stimuli across a wide range of conditions. Orientation thresholds, approximately 20 degrees on average, varied only slightly across modes of stimulus presentation (scanned or indented), stimulus amplitudes, scanning speeds, and different stimulus types (bars or edges). The tactile orientation acuity was found to be poorer than its visual counterpart for stimuli of similar aspect ratio, contrast, and size. This result stands in contrast to the equivalent spatial acuity of the two systems (at the limit set by peripheral innervation density) and to the results of studies of tactile and visual letter recognition, which show that the two modalities yield comparable performance when stimuli are scaled appropriately.