Biomedical subjects

Alberto Gallace

Publications and source records attributed to Alberto Gallace.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Crossmodal change blindness between vision and touch.

Change blindness is the name given to people's inability to detect changes introduced between two consecutively-presented scenes when they are separated by a distractor that masks the transients that are typically associated with change. Change blindness has been reported within vision, audition, and touch, but has never before been investigated when successive patterns are presented to different sensory modalities. In the study reported here, we investigated change detection performance when the two to-be-compared stimulus patterns were presented in the same sensory modality (i.e., both visual or both tactile) and when one stimulus pattern was tactile while the other was presented visually or vice versa. The two to-be-compared patterns were presented consecutively, separated by an empty interval, or else separated by a masked interval. In the latter case, the masked interval could either be tactile or visual. The first experiment investigated visual-tactile and tactile-visual change detection performance. The results showed that in the absence of masking, participants detected changes in position accurately, despite the fact that the two to-be-compared displays were presented in different sensory modalities. Furthermore, when a mask was presented between the two to-be-compared displays, crossmodal change blindness was elicited no matter whether the mask was visual or tactile. The results of two further experiments showed that performance was better overall in the unimodal (visual or tactile) conditions than in the crossmodal conditions. These results suggest that certain of the processes underlying change blindness are multisensory in nature. We discuss these findings in relation to recent claims regarding the crossmodal nature of spatial attention.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

When visual transients impair tactile change detection: a novel case of crossmodal change blindness?

The inability of people to detect changes between consecutively presented visual displays, when separated by a blank screen or distractor, is known as "change blindness". This phenomenon has recently been reported to occur within the auditory and tactile modalities as well. To date, however, only distractors presented within the same sensory modality as the change have been demonstrated to produce change blindness. In the present experiment, we studied whether tactile change blindness might also be elicited by the presentation of a visual mask. Participants made same versus different judgments regarding two successively presented displays composed of two to three vibrotactile stimuli. While change detection performance was near-perfect when the two displays were presented one directly after the other, participants failed to detect many of the changes between the tactile displays when they were separated by an empty temporal interval. Critically, performance deteriorated still further when the presentation of a local (i.e., a mudsplash) or global visual transient coincided with the onset of the second tactile pattern. Analysis of the results using signal detection theory revealed that this crossmodal effect reflected a genuine perceptual impairment.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Numerosity judgments for tactile stimuli distributed over the body surface.

A large body of research now supports the claim that two different and dissociable processes are involved in making numerosity judgments regarding visual stimuli: subitising (fast and nearly errorless) for up to 4 stimuli, and counting (slow and error-prone) when more than 4 stimuli are presented. We studied tactile numerosity judgments for combinations of 1-7 vibrotactile stimuli presented simultaneously over the body surface. In experiment 1, the stimuli were presented once, while in experiment 2 conditions of single presentation and repeated presentation of the stimulus were compared. Neither experiment provided any evidence for a discontinuity in the slope of either the RT or error data suggesting that subitisation does not occur for tactile stimuli. By systematically varying the intensity of the vibrotactile stimuli in experiment 3, we were able to demonstrate that participants were not simply using the 'global intensity' of the whole tactile display to make their tactile numerosity judgments, but were, instead, using information concerning the number of tactors activated. The results of the three experiments reported here are discussed in relation to current theories of counting and subitising, and potential implications for the design of tactile user interfaces are highlighted.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

The failure to detect tactile change: a tactile analogue of visual change blindness.

A large body of empirical research now shows that people are surprisingly poor at detecting significant changes in visually presented scenes. This phenomenon is known as change blindness in vision. A similar phenomenon occurs in audition, but to date no such effect has been documented in touch. In the present study, we explored the ability of people to detect changes introduced between two consecutively presented vibrotactile patterns presented over the body surface. The patterns consisted of two or three vibrotactile stimuli presented for 200 msec. The position of one of the vibrotactile stimuli composing the display was repeatedly changed (alternating between two different positions) on 50% of the trials, but the same pattern was presented repeatedly on the remaining trials. Three conditions were investigated: No interval between the patterns, an empty interval between the patterns, and a masked interval between the patterns. Change detection was near perfect in the no-interval block. Performance deteriorated somewhat in the empty-interval block, but by far the worst change detection performance occurred in the masked-interval block. These results demonstrate that "change blindness" can also affect tactile perception.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Visual capture of apparent limb position influences tactile temporal order judgments.

Shore et al. [D.I. Shore, E. Spry, C. Spence, Spatial modulation of tactile temporal order judgments, Perception (submitted for publication)] recently demonstrated that people find it easier to judge which hand is touched first (in a tactile temporal order judgment task) when their hands are placed far apart rather than close together. In the present study, we used a mirror to manipulate the visually perceived distance between participants' hands, while holding the actual (i.e., proprioceptively-specified) distance between them constant. Participants were asked to determine which of two vibrotactile stimuli, one presented to either index finger using the method of constant stimuli, was presented first. Performance was significantly worse (i.e., the JND was larger) when the hands were perceived (due to the mirror reflection) as being close together rather than further apart. These results highlight the critical role that vision plays in influencing the conscious perception of the temporal order of tactile stimuli.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Examining the crossmodal consequences of viewing the Müller-Lyer illusion.

For many years, the Müller-Lyer illusion was studied as a purely "visual" illusion, but like many other optical illusions, the evidence now shows that it also occurs when stimuli are presented tactually. In the present study, we investigated whether the visual perception of the illusion would have any crossmodal consequences for haptic perception. The wings-in and wings-out parts of the Müller-Lyer illusion were placed end-to-end, sharing a central fin. This Brentano version of the illusion was presented visually on a screen in front of the participants, who had to compare the "felt" length of two sticks placed on the back of the screen, one behind either part of the illusion. Our results show that the presentation of the visual illusion modified the felt lengths of the sticks presented directly behind the illusion. In particular, the stick presented on the side of space perceived visually as being shorter (behind the wings-in part of the display) was perceived as longer, and vice versa for the stick mounted behind the space perceived visually as longer (behind the wings-out part of the display). These results highlight the crossmodal consequences of the visual perception of the Müller-Lyer illusion for the haptic perception of line length.

Adolescent↗