The effect of posture of own hand on visuotactile spatial compatibility

Yuka Igarashi, Department of Psychology, Tokyo Metropolitan University; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Abstract
In this study, we investigated whether visuotactile spatial compatibility is affected by posture of own hand. Participants made speeded discrimination responses to the location of vibrotactile targets presented to either the tip or base of their forefinger, while trying to ignore simultaneously-presented visual distractors presented to either side of central fixation on a front display. The participants rested their stimulated hand on a desk in either forward pointing or inward pointing posture. The array of the visual distractors was presented in four different angular rotations (0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees). We found that, when the participants’ hand was placed in the forward pointing posture, the magnitude of the visuotactile interference effects decreased as the angular difference in orientation between the hand posture and the visual distractor array increased. On the other hand, when the participants rested their hand in the inward orientation, such complete dependence of the magnitude of the visuotactile interference effects on proprioception was not observed, suggesting that visuotactile spatial compatibility is determined depending on both egocentric orientation of own hand and allocentric vertical orientation of the visual distractor array. Possible interactions between vision, touch, proprioception, and the internal representation of the hand will also be discussed.

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