Discrimination thresholds for haptic perception of volume, surface area, and weight

Kahrimanovic, M.; Tiest, Wouter M. Bergmann; Kappers, Astrid M. L.

doi:10.3758/s13414-011-0202-y

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Of course, in experiments usually one of the two objects is manipulated to achieve equal masses despite size variations. It has recently been shown that the density of objects tends to vary with the size of objects and that the brain infers this statistical relationship from the environment which leads to the size-weight illusion 17 . Our results, however, indicate that perceived heaviness also decreases with object size even when it can be seen that the object is mostly hollow in the centre, thus indicating that a direct inference between size and weight can also play a role in heaviness perception.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Object size can influence perceived weight independent of visual estimates of the volume of material

Plaisier¹,

Smeets²

2015

Sci Rep

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The size-weight illusion is the phenomenon that the smaller of two equally heavy objects is perceived to be heavier than the larger object when lifted. One explanation for this illusion is that heaviness perception is influenced by our expectations, and larger objects are expected to be heavier than smaller ones because they contain more material. If this would be the entire explanation, the illusion should disappear if we make objects larger while keeping the volume of visible material the same (i.e. objects with visible holes). Here we tested this prediction. Our results show that perceived heaviness decreased with object size regardless of whether objects visibly contained the same volume of material or not. This indicates that object size can influence perceived heaviness, even when it can be seen that differently sized objects contain the same volume of material.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Object size can influence perceived weight independent of visual estimates of the volume of material

Plaisier¹,

Smeets²

2015

Sci Rep

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“…As Troscianko et al (2012) recently showed, morphological features such as binocular vision may strongly influence a species’ foraging behavior. Although we do not think that the rather small body differences between the great apes accounted for their different performance, testing them on, for example, a haptic version of the task in which the subjects have to discriminate between differently sized objects via touching would be an interesting comparison (see Hille et al 2001; Kahrimanovic et al 2011 for studies with monkeys and humans). Accordingly, various factors may have influenced species’ size discrimination abilities, as well as their motivation to rely on such cues in a specific situation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monkeys perform as well as apes and humans in a size discrimination task

et al. 2013

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Whether the cognitive competences of monkeys and apes are rather similar or whether the larger-brained apes outperform monkeys in cognitive experiments is a highly debated topic. Direct comparative analyses are therefore essential to examine similarities and differences among species. We here compared six primate species, including humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas (great apes), olive baboons, and long-tailed macaques (Old World monkeys) in a task on fine-grained size discrimination. Except for gorillas, subjects of all taxa (i.e. humans, apes, and monkeys) were able to discriminate three-dimensional cubes with a volume difference of only 10 % (i.e. cubes of 50 and 48 mm side length) and performed only slightly worse when the cubes were presented successively. The minimal size discriminated declined further with increasing time delay between presentations of the cubes, highlighting the difficulty to memorize exact size differences. The results suggest that differences in brain size, as a proxy for general cognitive abilities, did not account for variation in performance, but that differential socio-ecological pressures may better explain species differences. Our study highlights the fact that differences in cognitive abilities do not always map neatly onto phylogenetic relationships and that in a number of cognitive experiments monkeys do not fare significantly worse than apes, casting doubt on the assumption that larger brains per se confer an advantage in such kinds of tests.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10071-013-0616-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…Volume is typically assessed by enclosing the object with the hand(s) (Lederman and Klatzky, 1987). Kahrimanovic et al (2011b) investigated the just noticeable difference (JND) of spheres, cubes and tetrahedrons that fitted in the hand. They found that for the smaller stimuli of their set, the volumes of tetrahedra were significantly more difficult to discriminate than those of cubes and spheres, with Weber fractions of 0.17, 0.15 and 0.13, respectively.…”

Section: Volumementioning

confidence: 99%