Haptic Perceptual Instruments

触觉知觉仪器克劳迪娅·卡雷洛、蒂尔·弗兰克和M·T·特维虽然人们通常认为触觉--触觉--主要是一种皮肤感觉，但它作为肌肉感觉的角色允许随时控制身体，这对进入环境和与环境互动至关重要。有手的机动工具和有腿的横穿表面涉及肌肉和结缔组织的变形。这种动作是由康涅狄格大学的克劳迪娅·卡雷洛、蒂尔·弗兰克和迈克尔·特维的研究团队所称的“触觉感知仪器”完成的。他们由美国国家科学基金会资助的研究解决了这种肌肉感觉对腿部运动(例如行走、跳跃、奔跑等)所走距离的感知的贡献。在没有视觉输入的情况下。防止研究参与者看着他们要去的地方，就可以对触觉进行“纯粹”的测量。人类、其他哺乳动物、昆虫和蜘蛛类动物可以严格地通过行走和奔跑产生的运动和力来测量旅行的距离。这种认知是“机械智能”可能具有的普遍能力的例子。对人类的实验表明，机械智能和某些基本记忆原理之间存在相似之处。正如记忆通常通过学习和测试来评估一样，腿部行走也是如此：判断从A点到B点的外出旅行的距离被比作学习阶段，匹配从B点到A点的返回旅行的距离被比作测试阶段。通常，在各种因素上的学习和测试之间的相似性越大，记忆表现越好，这些因素包括外部环境(例如，物理位置)、内部心理状态(例如，情绪)以及在学习和测试期间用于处理信息的心理策略(例如，使用心理意象作为助记符)。对于蒙住双腿的运动，提出关键的公因子是由运动模式的数学分类(技术上称为“对称群”)提供的。在计划的研究中，当外出步态和返回步态属于同一类别(如行走和慢跑)时，返回距离应与外出距离精确匹配，并独立于各种重要变量--速度、方向、惯性载荷、步长和测量延迟。另一方面，当两个步态来自不同的类别(如行走和跳跃)时，这两个距离不应匹配。在技术术语中，Carello、Frank和Turvey提出了一个非线性动力学模型，该模型将出站步态和返回步态视为单个耦合的触觉感知工具，并提供了一种方法来识别和量化该工具的吸引子(运动趋向的稳定模式)和“噪声”(吸引子模式周围的变异性)。使用这样一个正式的数学模型来研究知觉和行动的心理学是一个重要的发展。研究人员希望为在行为和神经生物学水平上理解基于运动产生的信息的路径整合过程提供理论和实验基础。这项计划中的研究将为研究基于肌肉敏感度的感知能力引入新的想法。揭示使用肌肉感觉来感知物体(该团队之前的研究)和使用肌肉感觉来感知环境(计划中的研究)之间的共同点，有望为更深层次和更广泛地理解机械接触在触觉系统的感知和记忆功能中所起的作用奠定基础。该项目将通过将物理和数学课程与认知和神经科学课程结合起来，扩大和加强心理学学生通常接受的培训。重要的是，确定腿部运动产生的运动和力导致成功或不成功感知行走距离的条件，将为运动障碍的性质及其康复提供新的假设。

Haptic Perceptual InstrumentsClaudia Carello, Till Frank, and M. T. TurveyAlthough it is common to think of haptics -- the sense of touch -- chiefly as a skin sense, its role as a muscle sense allows moment-to-moment control of the body that is crucial to moving in and interacting with the environment. Maneuvering tools with the hands and traversing surfaces with the legs involve the deformation of muscles and connective tissues. Such maneuvering is accomplished by what the research team of Claudia Carello, Till Frank, and Michael Turvey at the University of Connecticut have called "haptic perceptual instruments." Their NSF-funded research addresses the contribution of this muscle sense to the perception of distances traveled by legged locomotion (e.g., walking, skipping, galloping, etc.) in the absence of visual input. Preventing participants in the research from looking where they are going allows for the "pure" measurement of haptic perception. Humans, other mammals, insects, and arachnids can measure distance traveled strictly by the motions and forces generated by walking and running. Such perceptions are examples of the possibly universal ability of "mechanical intelligence." Experiments with humans suggest parallels between mechanical intelligence and certain basic memory principles. Just as memory is commonly evaluated via study and test so, too, is legged locomotion: judging distance on an outbound excursion from point A to point B is likened to the study phase and matching that distance on the return excursion from point B to point A is likened to the test phase. Typically memory performance is better the more similarities there are between study and test on a wide variety of factors, such as external environment (e.g., physical location), internal mental state (e.g., mood), and the mental strategy used to process the information during study and test (e.g., use of mental imagery as a mnemonic). For blindfolded legged locomotion, it is proposed that the crucial common factor is provided by a mathematical classification of locomotion patterns (technically called "symmetry groups") . In the planned research, when the outbound and return gaits belong to the same category (such as walking and jogging), return distances are expected to accurately match the outbound distances and to be independent of a variety of important variables -- speed, direction, inertial load, step size, and delay of measurement. On the other hand, the two distances should not match when the two gaits are from different categories (such as walking and skipping). In technical terms, Carello, Frank, and Turvey propose a nonlinear dynamical model which treats the outbound and return gaits as a single coupled haptic perceptual instrument, with a method for identifying and quantifying the instrument's attractors (stable patterns that the movements tend towards) and "noise" (variability around the attractor patterns). The use of such a formal mathematical model for studying the psychology of perception and action is an important development. The researchers hope to provide a theoretical and experimental foundation for understanding, at both behavioral and neurobiological levels, the process of path integration based on movement-generated information. The planned research will introduce new ideas for studying perceptual capabilities grounded in muscle sensibility. Uncovering commonalities between using the muscle sense to perceive objects (the team's previous research) and using the muscle sense to perceive environments (the planned research) promises to lay a foundation for a deeper and broader understanding of the role mechanical contact plays in the perception and memory functions of the haptic system. The project will expand and enhance the training typically received by psychology students by combining courses in physics and mathematics and courses in cognition and neuroscience. Importantly, identifying conditions under which the motions and forces generated by legged locomotion lead to successful or unsuccessful perception of distance traveled will provide novel hypotheses about the nature of locomotion disorders and their rehabilitation.