Humans can sense small numbers of objects in a box by touch alone
Frissen I. Kappassov Z. Huang K.-Y. Ziat M.
November–December 2023SAGE Publications Ltd
Perception
2023#52Issue 11-12799 - 811 pp.
Everyday experiences suggest that a container, such as a box of chocolate sprinkles, can convey pertinent information about the nature of its content. Despite the familiarity of the experience, we do not know whether people can perceive the number of objects in the container from touch alone and how accurately they can do so. In three experiments, participants handled containers holding between one and five objects and verbally estimated their number. Containers were small cardboard jewelry boxes, and objects were round beads of varying diameter and weight. Any useful visual and auditory cues were precluded. Experiment 1 demonstrated very accurate performance, provided the objects were of sufficient weight. Experiment 2 demonstrated that withholding information about the possible number of objects inside the container does not affect accuracy at a group level but does produce occasional overestimations at an individual level. Experiment 3 demonstrated that removing the weight cue leads to systematic underestimations but does not eliminate peoples ability to distinguish between different numbers of objects in the container. This study contributes to a growing picture that container haptics is surprisingly capable.
container , haptics , numerosity , tactile cognition
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McGill University, Canada
Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
Bentley University, United States
McGill University
Nazarbayev University
Bentley University
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
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