Failure to Eliminate the Crossed-Hands Deficit in a Tactile Temporal Order Judgment

Kristie Dukewich, Dalhousie University, Department of Psychology

Abstract
Being able to identify and interact with tactile stimuli is fundamentally dependent on first being able to localize such stimuli, but it remains to be determined whether remapping of somatotopic locations into allocentric space is a necessary step for that interaction to occur. In a tactile temporal order judgment (TOJ) task participants are asked to temporally order two successive tactile stimulations to different hands. Results from experiments using tactile TOJ have suggested that the spatial remapping of body coordinates into allocentric space is critical for completing this task. The current study sought to determine whether this spatial remapping is necessary by attempting to eliminate the crossed-hands deficit. The results demonstrate that the crossed-hands deficit cannot be eliminate with speed stress, practice, or correct feedback, suggesting that observers remap somatotopic coordinates into external space automatically. The deficit appears to be linked to tactile tasks in which spatial resolution is necessary; however, more experiments need to be done in order to confirm that spatial resolution is both necessary and sufficient to produce the effect.

Not available

Back to Abstract