Vibrotactile pattern recognition

Several factors influence the identification of complex vibrotactile patterns, e.g., masking, attention, and experience. Two processes that may underlie backward masking are temporal integration and interruption. The types of target patterns used in previous studies have made it difficult to separate these two processes. The results of a study using a specially designed set of patterns that varied in the number of line segments they contained and had no intracharacter redundancy suggest that temporal integration is a major factor in masking. Masking can be reduced by spatially separating two patterns, e.g., presenting one to the index and one to the middle finger. This manipulation improves identification of a single pattern; however, identification of both patterns is difficult. Subjects appear to have difficulty in attending to two patterns presented to two fingers simultaneously. This difficulty is greatly reduced if two fingers on opposite hands are used. It has also been shown that experience improve...