TY - GEN
T1 - The natural truth
T2 - 6th International Conference on Haptics: Perception, Devices and Scenarios, EuroHaptics 2008
AU - Whitaker, T. Aisling
AU - Simões-Franklin, Cristina
AU - Newell, Fiona N.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Being able to readily discriminate between natural things and synthetic mimics in our environment is an important ability for many species. Making these judgements relies on the acuity of our different senses. Here, we investigated the relative contribution of visual and tactile cues, alone or in combination, to the categorisation of wood and fabric stimuli as natural or unnatural. For both wood and fabric stimuli we found that natural and unnatural stimuli could be discriminated, although performance varied as a function of modality. Specifically, for the wood stimuli, performance was better when vision and touch were combined, whereas for the fabric stimuli, performance was least accurate when using touch alone, compared to the visual or bimodal conditions, which were quantitatively similar. We concluded that both vision and touch contribute, albeit in qualitatively different ways, to the perception of "naturalness", and that a combination of these modalities facilitates this perception.
AB - Being able to readily discriminate between natural things and synthetic mimics in our environment is an important ability for many species. Making these judgements relies on the acuity of our different senses. Here, we investigated the relative contribution of visual and tactile cues, alone or in combination, to the categorisation of wood and fabric stimuli as natural or unnatural. For both wood and fabric stimuli we found that natural and unnatural stimuli could be discriminated, although performance varied as a function of modality. Specifically, for the wood stimuli, performance was better when vision and touch were combined, whereas for the fabric stimuli, performance was least accurate when using touch alone, compared to the visual or bimodal conditions, which were quantitatively similar. We concluded that both vision and touch contribute, albeit in qualitatively different ways, to the perception of "naturalness", and that a combination of these modalities facilitates this perception.
KW - Bimodal
KW - Fabric
KW - Naturalness
KW - Texture
KW - Touch
KW - Vision
KW - Visuotactile
KW - Wood
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=54249169591&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=54249169591&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-540-69057-3_39
DO - 10.1007/978-3-540-69057-3_39
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:54249169591
SN - 3540690565
SN - 9783540690566
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 319
EP - 324
BT - Haptics
Y2 - 10 June 2008 through 13 June 2008
ER -