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Fractal Fluctuations in Quiet Standing Predict the Use of Mechanical Information for Haptic Perception

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Abstract

Movement science has traditionally understood high-dimensional fluctuations as either antithetical or irrelevant to low-dimensional control. However, fluctuations incident to changeful, sometimes unpredictable stimulation must somehow reshape low-dimensional aspects of control through perception. The movement system’s fluctuations may reflect cascade dynamics in which many-sized events interact nonlinearly across many scales. Cascades yield fractal fluctuations, and fractality of fluctuations may provide a window on the interactions across scale supporting perceptual processes. To test these ideas, we asked adult human participants to judge whole or partial length for unseen rods (with and without added masses). The participants’ only experience with the objects came from supporting them across their shoulders during quiet standing. First, the degree of fractal temporal correlations in trial-by-trial series of planar Euclidean displacements in center of pressure (COP) significantly improved prediction of subsequent trial-by-trial judgments, above and beyond prediction by traditional predictors of haptic perception and conventional measures of COP variability. Second, comparison with linear surrogate data indicated the presence of nonlinear interactions across scale in these time series. These results demonstrate that high-dimensional fluctuations may serve a crucial role in the cascade dynamics supporting apparently low-dimensional control strategies.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank M. T. Turvey for helpful discussions, J. G. Holden and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and acknowledge NSF grant BCS-0925373 and the Wyss Institute for financial support.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interests related to and reap no financial benefits from presenting the work reported in the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, Storrs, CT, 06269-1020, USA

    Zsolt Palatinus & James A. Dixon

  2. Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, Storrs, CT, 06269-1020, USA

    Zsolt Palatinus & James A. Dixon

  3. Haskins Laboratories, 300 George St., New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    James A. Dixon

  4. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, 3 Blackfan Circle, 2nd Floor, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Damian G. Kelty-Stephen

Authors
  1. Zsolt Palatinus
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  2. James A. Dixon
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  3. Damian G. Kelty-Stephen
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Correspondence to Damian G. Kelty-Stephen.

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Associate Editor Thurmon E. Lockhart oversaw the review of this article.

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Palatinus, Z., Dixon, J.A. & Kelty-Stephen, D.G. Fractal Fluctuations in Quiet Standing Predict the Use of Mechanical Information for Haptic Perception. Ann Biomed Eng 41, 1625–1634 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-012-0706-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-012-0706-1

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