direct and indirect haptic calibration of visual size judgments直接和间接触觉校准的视觉大小判断.pdfVIP

Direct and Indirect Haptic Calibration of Visual Size Judgments 1 1 2,3 1 Monica Gori *, Alessandra Sciutti , David Burr , Giulio Sandini 1 Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy, 2 Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 3 Istituto di Neuroscienze del CNR, Pisa, Italy Abstract It has long been suspected that touch plays a fundamental role in the calibration of visual perception, and much recent evidence supports this idea. However, as the haptic exploration workspace is limited by the kinematics of the body, the contribution of haptic information to the calibration process should occur only within the region of the haptic workspace reachable by a limb (peripersonal space). To test this hypothesis we evaluated visual size perception and showed that it is indeed more accurate inside the peripersonal space. We then show that allowing subjects to touch the (unseen) stimulus after observation restores accurate size perception; the accuracy persists for some time, implying that calibration has occurred. Finally, we show that observing an actor grasp the object also produces accurate (and lasting) size perception, suggesting that the calibration can also occur indirectly by observing goal-directed actions, implicating the involvement of the ‘‘mirror system’’. Citation: Gori M, Sciutti A, Burr D, Sandini G (2011) Direct and Indirect Haptic Calibration of Visual Size Judgments. PLoS ONE 6(10): e25599. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0025599 Editor: Daniel Goldreich, McMaster University, Canada Received June 6, 2011; Accepted September 6, 2011; Published October 13, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Gori et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the