Roughness, smoothness, and preference: A study of quantitative relations in individual subjects.

Ekman, Gösta; Hosman, Jan; Lindstroem, B

doi:10.1037/h0021985

Cited by 103 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The association of smoothness with friction force is in agreement with other measurements of the coefficient of friction on the fingers (Ekman, Hosman, & Lindström, 1965) and in the mouth (Kokini et al , 1977). Earlier studies also seem to show that the smoothness of solid surfaces is inversely proportional to roughness (Stevens & Harris, 1962).…”

Section: Thus According To Equation 10supporting

confidence: 77%

Texture perceived with the fingers

Cussler

Zlotnick

Shaw

1977

Perception & Psychophysics

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Relative assessments of 10 attributes commonly used to describe the texture of liquids on skin were obtained for 14 liquids of widely varying rheological properties. The results were analyzed to show that these judgments can be predicted accurately from the assessments of just three attributes, smoothness, thinness, and warmth. Smoothness was found to be closely related to the forces of contact lubrication, and could be predicted from measurements of coefficients of friction. Thinness was found to be closely related to viscous forces, consistent with other predictions of assessments of thickness and spreadability. Warmth was not studied further. The results show how careful definition of the stimulus on the skin's surface can sharply simplify the interpretation of the psychophysical experiment.This work is in two parts. The objective of the first part was to devise a nonredundant vocabulary to describe texture perceived with the fingers. The following 10 attributes were selected as the initial vocabulary: thick, thin, spreadable, soft, hard, smooth, creamy, dry, warm, and cool. These attributes are the most important descriptors reported for cosmetics (Goldenberg & de la Rosa, 1971;Prall, 1973; Breuer, Note 1). This vocabulary contains considerable redundancy: For example, if a fluid is assessed as thin, it seems unlikely to be assessed as thick. The list is also uneven because it includes antonyms like warm and cool, but does not include rough, the expected antonym for smooth. Nevertheless, we decided to restrict the vocabulary to the words given because they are those most commonly used, and to delay investigation of the larger group of less cited attributes.Untrained observers were asked to scale these attributes, using the method of magnitude estimation and fluids of widely varying rheological properties. This wide range of properties was chosen in the expectation that this would effect a wide range of assessments. The observer's assessments were then used in a multiple regression analysis, from which a nonredundant subset of attributes could be selected. It was found that a subset of just three attributes could be used to accurately predict other attributes. This subset thus is a reduced vocabulary, suitable for further study.The second part of the paper shows how tactile assessments of fluid samples by human subjects can be quantitatively related to the forces acting on the skin's surface. This step, which is outside the J. E. Moon helped with some of the experiments. This work was partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant GK-32312-A2, and by Petroleum Research Fund Grant PRF-6376-AC-7. E.L.C. is supported by National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award 1K04-Am-70461. usual range of psychophysical investigation, represents a scheme for generalizing empirical correlations like Stevens' law. The nature of this generalization is best suggested by the example of smoothness. Stevens and Harris (1962) showed that for sandpaper (smoothness) 0: (grit diametery">.( 1) This correlat...

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Section: Thus According To Equation 10supporting

confidence: 77%

Texture perceived with the fingers

Cussler

Zlotnick

Shaw

1977

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Dorsch, Hsiao, Johnson, and Yoshioka (2001) used subjective magnitude ratings to examine roughness perception during the active exploration of sandpaper surfaces. In agreement with previous work examining roughness perception using sandpaper surfaces (Ekman, Hosman, & Lindstrom, 1965;Hollins & Risner, 2000), they found that perceived roughness increased with surface roughness. That is, sandpaper surfaces with lower grit values, which have larger particles, were perceived as being rougher than those with higher grit values (smaller particles).…”

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confidence: 81%

Roughness perception across the hands

Roberts

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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It has previously been shown that the perceived roughness of a surface touched by one digit is influenced by the roughness of a different surface touched simultaneously by another digit on the same hand. The present study was designed to examine whether this is the case when surfaces of varying roughness are touched using digits on separate hands. Participants touched pairs of sandpaper surfaces, in sequence, using the same digit, and identified which of the two was rougher. Roughness discrimination was measured in the presence of distractor surfaces touched simultaneously with the target surface, but using a different digit either on the same or on the other hand. The overall perception of roughness of the attended surfaces was better on the left than on the right hand. Perceived roughness also varied systematically with the roughness of the distractor surfaces. Attended surfaces were more likely to be perceived as smoother when they were paired with smooth rather than rough distractors. Likewise, attended surfaces tended to be perceived as rougher with rough distractors. This pattern of results occurred whether the attended and distractor digits were on the same hand or different hands. These data confirm that it is difficult to restrict tactile attention for roughness to a single digit and show that this difficulty extends to restricting attention to a single hand. Furthermore, the effect of a stimulus at an unattended body location was not simply to impair perception in general, but to bias it in the roughness direction of the distractor surface.

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“…For example, with direct touch, the perceived roughness of gratings has been found to increase as groove width increases and to decrease as ridge width increases (Lederman and Taylor 1972;Sathian et al 1989;Yoshioka et al 2001), and the perceived roughness of sandpapers is a power function of particle size (Ekman et al 1965;Hollins and Risner 2000). In other studies using embossed dot patterns, the relationship between perceived roughness and dot size, height, and spacing has been shown to be complex.…”

Section: What Are Roughness Hardness and Stickiness?mentioning

confidence: 95%

Texture perception through direct and indirect touch: An analysis of perceptual space for tactile textures in two modes of exploration

Yoshioka

Bensmaı̈a

Craig

et al. 2007

Somatosensory & Motor Research

183

122

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Considerable information about the texture of objects can be perceived remotely through a probe. It is not clear, however, how texture perception with a probe compares with texture perception with the bare finger. Here we investigate the perception of a variety of textured surfaces encountered daily (e.g., corduroy, paper, and rubber) using the two scanning modes-direct touch through the finger and indirect touch through a probe held in the hand-in two tasks. In the first task, subjects rated the overall pair-wise dissimilarity of the textures. In the second task, subjects rated each texture along three continua, namely, perceived roughness, hardness, and stickiness of the surfaces, shown previously as the primary dimensions of texture perception in direct touch. From the dissimilarity judgment experiment, we found that the texture percept is similar though not identical in the two scanning modes. From the adjective rating experiments, we found that while roughness ratings are similar, hardness and stickiness ratings tend to differ between scanning conditions. These differences between the two modes of scanning are apparent in perceptual space for tactile textures based on multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. Finally, we demonstrate that three physical quantities, vibratory power, compliance, and friction carry roughness, hardness, and stickiness information, predicting perceived dissimilarity of texture pairs with indirect touch. Given that different types of texture information are processed by separate groups of neurons across direct and indirect touch, we propose that the neural mechanisms underlying texture perception differ between scanning modes.

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Roughness, smoothness, and preference: A study of quantitative relations in individual subjects.

Cited by 103 publications

References 17 publications

Texture perceived with the fingers

Texture perceived with the fingers

Roughness perception across the hands

Texture perception through direct and indirect touch: An analysis of perceptual space for tactile textures in two modes of exploration

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