Anisotropies of tactile distance perception on the face
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Anisotropies of tactile distance perception on the face Matthew R. Longo 1 & Elena Amoruso 1 & Elena Calzolari 2 & Michael Ben Yehuda 3 & Patrick Haggard 4 & Elena Azañón 5,6,7
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract The distances between pairs of tactile stimuli oriented across the width of the hand dorsum are perceived as about 40% larger than equivalent distances oriented along the hand length. Clear anisotropies of varying magnitudes have been found on different sites on the limbs and less consistently on other parts of the body, with anisotropies on the center of the forehead, but not on the belly. Reported anisotropies on the center of the forehead, however, might reflect an artefact of categorical perception from the face midline, which might be comparable to the expansion of tactile distance perception observed for stimuli presented across joint boundaries. To test whether tactile anisotropy is indeed a general characteristic of the tactile representation of the face, we assessed the perceived distance between pairs of touches on the cheeks and three locations on the forehead: left, right, and center. Consistent with previous results, a clear anisotropy was apparent on the center of the forehead. Importantly, similar anisotropies were also evident on the left and right sides of the forehead and both cheeks. These results provide evidence that anisotropy of perceived tactile distance is not a specific feature of tactile organization at the limbs but it also exists for the face, and further suggest that the spatial distortions found for tactile distances that extend across multiple body parts are not present for stimuli that extend across the body midline. Keywords Distance perception . Anisotropy . Categorical perception . Face . Tactile perception
Introduction In one of the first systematic investigations of the sense of touch in the nineteenth century, Weber (1834) found that as he moved the two points of a compass across his skin it felt to him as if the distance between them increased as he moved
* Elena Azañón [email protected] 1
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
2
Neuro-Otology Unit, Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK
3
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
4
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
5
Institute of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
6
Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
7
Department of Behavioral Neurology, Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
them from a region of relatively low sensitivity (e.g., the forearm) to a region of relatively higher sensitivity (e.g., the hand). This pattern has been replicated in numerous subsequent studies (Anema, Wolswijk, Ruis, & Dijkerman, 2008; Cholewiak, 1999; Goudge, 1918; Miller, Longo, & Saygin, 2016; TaylorClarke, Jacobsen, & Haggard, 2004), which collectivel
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