Spatial Biases and the Haptic Experience of Surface Orientation

The two main purposes of this chapter are to review past evidence for a systematic spatial bias in the perception of surface orientation (geographical slant), and to report two new experiments documenting this bias in the manual haptic system. Orientation is a fundamental perceptual property of surfaces that is relevant both for planning and implementing actions. Geographical slant refers to the orientation (inclination or pitch along its main axis) of a surface relative to the gravitationally-defined horizontal. It has long been known that hills appear visually steeper than they are (e.g., Ross, 1974). Only recently has it been documented that (1) there is also bias in the haptic perception of surface orientation (Hajnal et al., 2011), and that (2) similar visual and haptic biases even exist for small surfaces within reach (Durgin, Li & Hajnal, 2010).

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