Citation

Lederman SJ, Summers C, Klatzky RL. Perception 1996; 25(8): 983-998.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Lederman@pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, SAGE Publications)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8938010

Abstract

The influence of modality-encoding bias on the relative importance ('cognitive salience') of object shape, size, and material, with the last determined by weight and thermal variations, was examined. Experiment 1 confirmed that for these stimulus objects all five properties were very accessible haptically, as measured by the time to identify the property level of each designated property; however, observers were still generally faster for geometric than material properties. In experiment 2, the influence of modality-encoding bias on cognitive salience was assessed by using a task involving free sorting by similarity. As predicted, modality-encoding bias strongly influenced cognitive salience. Observers favoured sorting by material under haptic- bias instructions, and three-dimensional geometric properties (especially shape) under visual-bias instructions. Videotaped hand movements indicated that modality-encoding biases reflect long-term knowledge of the relative speed and precision of manual exploration patterns, rather than exploration of the current set of objects.

Language: en