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Temporal Integration of Tactile Inputs from Multiple Sites

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Haptics: Perception, Devices, Control, and Applications (EuroHaptics 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9774))

Abstract

We investigated the perceived frequency elicited by two vibrating probes on the skin. Participants (n = 11) compared two probes vibrating in counter-phase (25 Hz), with comparison stimuli of in-phase vibration (18–54 Hz). They indicated which had the higher perceived frequency. Skin sites on the palm (glabrous) and arm (hairy) were tested with a range of probe separations (1–16 cm) and amplitudes (10–120 µm). Perceived frequency increased with decreasing separation of the probes (F 1,10 = 182.8, p < 0.001). The two skin sites did not significantly differ (F 1,10 = 3.6, p = 0.087). Perceived frequency was only minimally affected by amplitude changes between 40 and 120 μm (F 2,20 = 6.4, p = 0.007, \( \eta_{G}^{2} = 0.06 \)). Both phase and spatial separation strongly influence vibrotactile interaction between two skin locations in a manner largely independent of changes in amplitude, and of skin type.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NHMRC Project Grant APP1028284 to IB & RMV and NHMRC Project Grant APP1067353 to PB & IB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Sarah McIntyre, Ingvars Birznieks & Paul P. Breen

  2. Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia

    Sarah McIntyre, Ingvars Birznieks & Richard M. Vickery

  3. School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Australia, Sydney, Australia

    Ingvars Birznieks & Richard M. Vickery

  4. The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Robin Andersson & Gabriel Dicander

Authors
  1. Sarah McIntyre
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  2. Ingvars Birznieks
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  3. Robin Andersson
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  4. Gabriel Dicander
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  5. Paul P. Breen
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  6. Richard M. Vickery
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah McIntyre .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

    Fernando Bello

  2. The University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Japan

    Hiroyuki Kajimoto

  3. University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA

    Yon Visell

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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McIntyre, S., Birznieks, I., Andersson, R., Dicander, G., Breen, P.P., Vickery, R.M. (2016). Temporal Integration of Tactile Inputs from Multiple Sites. In: Bello, F., Kajimoto, H., Visell, Y. (eds) Haptics: Perception, Devices, Control, and Applications. EuroHaptics 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9774. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42321-0_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42321-0_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42320-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42321-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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