Perception of the material properties of wood based on vision, audition, and touch

Abstract

Most research on the multimodal perception of material properties has investigated the perception of material properties of two modalities such as vision-touch, vision-audition, audition-touch, and vision-action. Here, we investigated whether the same affective classifications of materials can be found in three different modalities of vision, audition, and touch, using wood as the target object. Fifty participants took part in an experiment involving the three modalities of vision, audition, and touch, in isolation. Twenty-two different wood types including genuine, processed, and fake were perceptually evaluated using a questionnaire consisting of twenty-three items (12 perceptual and 11 affective). The results demonstrated that evaluations of the affective properties of wood were similar in all three modalities. The elements of "expensiveness, sturdiness, rareness, interestingness, and sophisticatedness" and "pleasantness, relaxed feelings, and liked-disliked" were separately grouped for all three senses. Our results suggest that the affective material properties of wood are at least partly represented in a supramodal fashion. Our results also suggest an association between perceptual and affective properties, which will be a useful tool not only in science, but also in applied fields.

Specification of Individuality in Causal Relationships among Texture-related Attributes, Emotions, and Preferences

“…In order to effectively design surface textures of products, it is crucial to understand the causal relationships among these different types of texture-related experiences. Especially because emotional and personal experiences significantly influence the value of a product, many studies have investigated experiences of pleasantness, comfort, and preference for product design purposes [1][2][3][4][5].…”

The Appraisal of Sustainable Materials

“…Users recognise materials not only by assigning them to a specific category but also by estimating their quality, which sometime can be highly subjective and is detached from the objective utilities of the material (Fleming et al, 2013). For instance, dark, clear and glossy wood is evaluated as expensive, sophisticated, rare and interesting (Fujisaki et al, 2015), whereas a radial section of softwood evokes mellow, pleasing and natural feelings (Song & Zhao, 2011). In her research Karana found that when users appraise a material, typically there is a link between use and associative descriptions, and manufacturing process descriptions and sensorial descriptions.…”

A Comparative Study of the Performance of Wood-Plastic Composites and Typical Substrates as Heating Floor

“…According to previous reports, different materials could cause different warm/cold feelings to human subjects, even though they are at the same temperatures (Fenko et al 2010;Fujisaki et al 2015). Consequently, it was important to investigate the effects of different materials on the warm/cold feelings of human subjects touching heated and unheated heating floors.…”