The Enactive Torch: A New Tool for the Science of Perception

Abstract

Abstract-The cognitive sciences are increasingly coming to terms with the embodied, embedded, extended, and experiential aspects of the mind. Exemplifying this shift, the enactive approach points to an essential role of goal-directed bodily activity in the generation of meaningful perceptual experience, i.e., sense-making. Here, building on recent insights into the transformative effects of practical tooluse, we make use of the enactive approach in order to provide a definition of an enactive interface in terms of augmented sensemaking. We introduce such a custom-built interface, the Enactive Torch, and present a study of its experiential effects. The results demonstrate that the user experience is not adequately captured by any standardly assumed perceptual modality; rather, it is a new feeling that is mediated by the design of the device and shaped by the overall situation of the task. Taken together these findings show that there is much to be gained by synergies between engineering and the cognitive sciences in the creation of new experiencecentered technology. We suggest that the guiding principle should be the design of interfaces that serve as a transparent medium for augmenting our natural skills of interaction with the world, instead of requiring conscious attention to the interface as an opaque object in the world.

Who Controls Who? Embodied Control Within Human–Technology Choreographies

“…Relevant challenges also include the lack of understanding of situational factors of emotion expression. Seth, 2012). The basic idea is that control should be implemented as experientially transparent by avoiding positioning it between the user and his or her operational environment.…”

Enactive sketches for designing enactive interactions

“…Theories of embodied cognition and enactive action-perception offer new foundations for the current stage of tangible, embedded, embodied interaction [3,4,9]. The "cognitivist" approach [4] put on the user side some type of reasoning between perception and action.…”

“…Enaction involves expressing and getting knowledge through the act of performing physical activities tightly coupled to perception [4]. Enactive interfaces are human computer interfaces based on enactive knowledge.…”

Identification of Vibrotactile Patterns Encoding Obstacle Distance Information

“…Among the haptic displays presented to date, vibrotactile actuators have been the most widely used in applications providing tactile cues for sensory substitution or augmentation, such as in prosthetic and assistive devices, entertainment, navigation systems for the visually impaired or for rescue/military applications, letter displays or contact notification of a virtual object [16], [17], [18], [19], [20] as they are compact, light-weight, affordable and easily integrated into portable systems. As such, also the majority of haptic displays in ETAs employ vibrotactile actuators [5], [6], [10], [11], [21]. Single or multiple vibration motors are attached to body parts or the handle of an ETA to provide information about the surroundings.…”