The effect of non-informative sound on haptic scene perception

Jason Chan, Trinity College Dublin

Abstract
Previous research has investigated if haptic scene perception is affected by ‘non-informative’ vision (Newport et al., 2002). Participants were asked to haptically match the orientation of two bars. They had difficulty orienting the bars when no visual cues were provided. This is in accordance with the belief that haptic space is non-Euclidian (Kappers & Koenderink, 1999). However, when irrelevant visual cues were given participants accuracy improved. We have also shown a similar effect in haptic scene perception with non-informative vision. In this study, we explore whether non-informative sound also affects haptic scene perception. Participants were blindfolded and wore circum-aural headphones before entering the experimental room. This was done to minimize any external cues that could affect performance. Participants learned the haptic scene for one minute, followed by a 20 second ISI. Then the unspeeded test phase began where participants were asked to explore and then point to the two objects that were switched. Fifty percent of participants received non-informative auditory white noise through 3 loudspeakers during the experiment. The remaining participants did not receive any sound. The implications of this study will be discussed.

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