Vibrotactile target saliency

We tested the saliency of a single vibrotractile target (T) among 2 to 7 nontargets (N), presented by 8 tactors that were equally distributed over a horizontal band around the torso. Targets and nontargets had different pulse duration, but the same activation period and no onset asynchrony. T-N similarity was varied by changing the difference between T and N pulse duration. For target present trials the response times increased with the number of stimulus items for all conditions tested, suggesting a serial discrimination process. For target absent trials the response times were independent of the number of stimulus items, suggesting a parallel discrimination process. We found no effect of T-N similarity and no search asymmetry. The present results suggest that tactile target search is not comparable to visual search.

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