Perceiving the Width and Height of a Hand-Held Object by Dynamic Touch

The haptic perceptual subsystem of dynamic touch is prominent in manipulating and transporting objects, providing a nonvisible awareness of their linear dimensions. The hypothesis that perceptions of object width and height by dynamic touch are different functions of the inertia tensor is addressed. In two experiments heights and widths of nonvisible wielded objects were judged separately. Experiment 1 used solid rectangular parallelepipeds of different sizes; Experiment 2 used objects of identical mass and linear dimensions but nonidentical inertia ellipsoids. Width and height perceptions of comparable reliability and accuracy were found to vary as distinct functions of the objects' inertial eigenvalues. Discussion focused on the notion of tangible shape and on the selectivity of attention within dynamic touch.