The vibro-tactile alarm was easier to learn than the auditory alarm (p<0.05). The performance of the vibro-tactile alarm was significantly better than the auditory alarm in identification rate (p<0.002) and accuracy (p<0.002). Surprisingly, the combined vibrotactile and auditory alarm was not better than the vibro-tactile alarm alone due to an increased rate of misinterpreted alarms. Most users...

An immersive technology being developed by the Army to provide enhanced situation awareness for military personnel involves the use of tactile stimulators arranged in a matrix pattern surrounding the torso. When activated sequentially the tactile display can be swept over the torso to provide a sense of motion. This tactile stimulus can alter the perceived experience of self-motion produced by ...

[Purpose] The interaction between the visual and tactile modalities influences on different levels from neural activity, perception, higher cognition to behavior. The aim of this study was to examine how a visual stimulus influences tactile sensitivity depending on temporal asynchrony. [Subjects and Methods] In total, 15 participants took part in this study. They were required to perform a two-...

OBJECTIVE The Somatic Signal Detection Task (SSDT; Lloyd, Manson, Brown and Poliakoff, 2008) is an innovative paradigm to study perceptual processes related to physical symptoms. It allows examining touch illusions as a laboratory analog of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) according to the cognitive model of MUS proposed by Brown (2004). The present study compared psychopathologic measures ...

The work presented in this paper is part of our investigation in the ROBOSKIN project. The project aims to develop new robot capabilities based on the tactile feedback provided by novel robotic skin. The main objective of the project is to develop cognitive mechanisms to improve human-robot interaction capabilities. One application domain that is investigated in the project is robot-assisted pl...

This paper addresses the temporal factors involved in the integration of auditory and tactile information. Perceptual threshold values for auditory-tactile asynchrony were measured using a broadband noise for the auditory stimulus (presented to the subjects via headphones) and a sinusoidal wave for the tactile stimulus (presented at the tip of the index finger via a shaker). In the first experi...

Affective touch plays an important role in children's social interaction and is involved in shaping the development of the social brain. The positive affective component of touch is thought to be conveyed via a group of unmyelinated, low-threshold mechanoreceptive afferents, known as C-tactile fibers that are optimally activated by gentle, slow, stroking touch. Touch targeting these C-tactile f...

Subjects were presented with pairs of tactile drifting sinusoids and made speed discrimination judgments. On some trials, a visual drifting sinusoid, which subjects were instructed to ignore, was presented simultaneously with one of the two tactile stimuli. When the visual and tactile gratings drifted in the same direction (i.e. from left to right), the visual distractors were found to increase...

Body image disturbances are central to anorexia nervosa (AN). Previous studies have focused mainly on attitudinal and visual aspects. Studies on somatosensory aspects thus far have been scarce. We therefore investigated whether AN patients and controls differed in tactile perception, and how this tactile body image related to visual body image and body dissatisfaction. The Tactile Estimation Ta...

Virtual surface characteristics of tactile displays are investigated to characterize the feeling of human touch for a haptic interface application. In order to represent the tactile feeling, a prototype tactile display incorporating Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluid has been developed. Tactile display devices simulate the finger's skin to feel the sensations of contact such as compliance, friction...