The Bourdon illusion in haptic space

A strong Bourdon illusion—the apparent bentness of a straight edge—in the active haptic mode was established in two experiments. Blindfolded subjects clasped the opposite surfaces of an object with the same frontal profile as the visual figure between thumb and forefinger and moved the latter together from end to end across the object. When the two triangular components of the objects were rotated through 180° so that their bases instead of their apexes were contiguous, the illusion was reversed in direction and reduced by about half, as with the visual illusion. It was concluded that the active haptic Bourdon illusion is basically the same as the visual illusion and can be accounted for by a compromise in perception between the orientation of the test surface and that of the object of which it is an integral part.

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