Changing Finger Movement Perception: Influence of Active Haptics on Visual Dominance

Abstract

The perception of one’s own body is a complex mechanism that can be disturbed by conflicting sensory information and lead to illusory (mis-) perceptions. Prominent models of multisensory integration propose that sensory streams are integrated according to their reliability by approximating Bayesian inference. As such, when considering self-attribution of seen motor actions, previous works argue in favor of visual dominance over other sensations, and internal cues. In the present work, we use virtual reality and a haptic glove to investigate the influence of an active haptic feedback on one’s visual and agency judgments over a performed finger action under experimentally manipulated visual and haptic feedbacks. Data overall confirm that vision dominates for agency judgment in conditions of multisensory conflict. Interestingly, we also show that participants’ visual judgment over their finger action is sensitive to multisensory conflicts (vision, proprioception, motor afferent signals, and haptic perception), thus bringing an important nuance to the widely accepted view on a general visual dominance.

MultiVibes: What if your VR Controller had 10 Times more Vibrotactile Actuators?

“…On average, the participants correctly identified the pattern played among the 12 patterns 58 % of the time. It is important to note that the participants perceived the pattern essentially as haptic (tactile, through the vibratory stimulation of the controller, and proprioceptive, through the position of their hand and fingers) without any visual indication, although sight remains the main sense in humans in the elaboration of a sensory judgment [7]. Despite the lack of visual information, the participants were successful 58 % of the time compared to 8 % for random choices in identifying the correct pattern.…”

Designing immersive interfaces for clinical applications

“…This mechanism is also exploited in clinical XR interfaces addressing phantom limb syndrome in amputee patients (Hunter, 2003;Foell et al, 2014). However, the visual dominance is less prominent during active haptics and self-generated motor tasks (Tsakiris et al, 2006;Rognini et al, 2013;Boban et al, 2022), what highlights the interference with proprioceptive signals, and the need for realistic feedback solutions for sensorimotor trainings. The implications of visuotactile integration in body ownership and out-of-body experience also suggest potential for further avatar therapy, sensibilization, and immersion research (Pavani et al, 2000;Rognini et al, 2013).…”

Novel Neurostimulation-Based Haptic Feedback Platform for Grasp Interactions With Virtual Objects

“…VR is often characterized by visual dominance and previous work has shown that sense of agency in VR can be altered when the visual feedback provided is incongruent with the participant's actual movements (Salomon et al, 2016). However, more recent work challenges this visual dominance theory with haptic feedback manipulation during multisensory conflicts in VR (Boban et al, 2022). Boban et al found that active haptic feedback paired with congruent proprioceptive and motor afferent signals and incongruent visual feedback can reduce visual perception accuracy in a changing finger movement task in VR.…”