Self-attribution of a viewing object modulates tactile discrimination performance

Kumiko Enokizono, Kobe University, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract
The aim of the present study is to clarify whether vision of body affects tactile perception. For this purpose, participants were required to make speeded finger discrimination responses to unseen tactile stimuli in the crossed finger posture, each fingers of both hands positioned alternately with palm-side down, while either viewing or not their fingers. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that participants mislocalized the target tactile stimuli to the visually adjacent finger. This result revealed that the position of tactile event was represented in relation to the visual environment. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the appearance of the fingers, using photograph of the fingers, line drawing of the fingers, or photograph of a neutral object (wooden block). The result showed that the tactile mislocalizations to the visually adjacent finger decreased when participants viewed the photograph and line drawing of the fingers in comparison with when they viewed their own fingers directly. These results suggest that effectiveness of visual representation for coding tactile event depends on whether participants identify the viewing object as their own body.

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