Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1981.

Abstract not available

On October 19-22, 1997 the Second PHANToM Users Group Workshop was held at the MIT Endicott House in Dedham, Massachusetts. Designed as a forum for sharing results and insights, the workshop was attended by more than 60 participants from 7 countries. These proceedings report on workshop presentations in diverse areas including rigid and compliant rendering, tool kits, development environments, techniques for scientific data visualization, multi-modal issues and a programming tutorial.

My thesis is a collection of philosophical essays on the sense of touch. I argue first that touch is much like vision in being unisensory. (This has often been denied). But it is unlike vision in displaying a duality of the proximal and the distal, since it informs us both of the condition of our own bodies, and of the properties of external things. My account of this duality is unorthodox, since I argue that we do not sense distant objects in virtue of sensing the condition of our own bodies. Both forms of touch involve exploratory action—both are forms of haptic perception—but the nature of this involvement is unclear. I defend the view that haptic perceptions are haptic explorations. I first clarify this thesis, then distinguish it from other views, like those of Alva Noë and Susan Hurley, that posit a strong link between action and perception. Despite this interactive nature, touch may seem more constrained than vision and audition in requiring direct bodily contact with objects in the world. I argue against this view, and show that through touch we are capable of sensing objects that are not, and are not perceived as being, in direct contact with our bodies. Here again, touch is somewhat like vision. The development of this account requires conceptual analysis of a range of important issues in the philosophy of perception, including the nature of multisensory experience, the role of bodily awareness in perception, the relation between action and perception, and the structure of non-visual spatial perception. For instance, because touch involves both coordinated bodily movements and a range of distinct sensory receptors in the skin, it is often thought to be a multisensory form of awareness (especially by psychologists). However, this view relies on an implausible conception of multisensory interaction. In its place, I develop a nuanced hierarchy of multisensory involvement according to which touch is a single modality. This is because the various systems involved in touch all predicate or assign sensory properties to the same tangible objects: when we grasp a mug, for instance, many different tactual properties—shape, warmth, texture, etc.—are all felt to belong to the mug. This is similar to what happens in vision with visual objects: when we see an object, a range of different visual properties, largely processed in functionally-distinct systems—are seen as belonging to it. Another unique aspect of my view is the claim that through touch we can experience distal objects—objects not in direct or even apparent contact with our bodies. I develop a positive account of such touch, arguing that distal touch requires (1) a strong interactive connection between our bodies and the distal object (through tools or other such intermediaries) and (2) that distal objects are represented in touch as located in peripersonal space, the space immediately surrounding our bodies, defined by the limits of our exploratory engagement (by how far we can reach or move). This positive account allows for a more robust account of our embodied experience, and shows that touch—at least in some respects—is more like the other senses than typically supposed.

The purpose of the study was to determine if subjects could be trained to discriminate surfaces by experiencing a series of structured training tasks utilizing apparatus developed for training discrimination in tactual perception of surfaces perceived by the finger tips.The subjects of the study were the legally blind male and female students in the kindergarten, first, and second grades at a midwestern residential institution for blind children. The age range of the 15 subjects who participated in the study was six years one month through twelve years six months. These subjects represented 65% of the total population of the three grades.The study was a pretest-posttest control group design. Each subject received a pretest and a posttest which utilized the Roughness Discrimination Test, a test designed to predict Braille reading readiness. Each subject of the experimental group experienced a series of game-type activities utilizing two sets of wooden blocks with surfaces covered with #100, #80-D, #60, #50, #40, and #36 production paper. Each subject of the control group experienced the series of game-type activities utilizing one set of wooden blocks with surfaces finished to the extent that no textural surface variation existed. The pretest, experimental group treatment, control group activity, and posttest were all administered by the examiner to each subject on an individual basis.The data were examined both descriptively and statistically utilizing measures of central tendency, the Mann-Whitney U-test, and analysis of variance. The measures of central tendency yielded a mean increase of 8.37 points for the experimental group and an increase of 2.28 points for the control from pretest to posttest. The median score increased 23.50 points for the experimental group and decreased four points for the control group. The analysis of data through the Mann-Whitney U-test and analysis of variance yielded no statistically significant difference at the 0.05 or the 0.01 levels of significance.Within the limits dictated by this study, the following conclusion was made. The tactual training tasks as designed and utilized in this study do not change in a positive direction the ability to discriminate surfaces as measured by the Roughness Discrimination Test.Based upon the results of the study, the following recommendations were made for further research:A study similar to the present one should be conducted introducing practice as a variable.A study similar to the present one should be conducted comparing and contrasting the performance of day school and public school blind children with residential school blind children.A study similar to the present one should be conducted utilizing blindfolded, sighted children as subjects for the purpose of comparing the ability to discriminate with that of blind children.

My thesis is a collection of philosophical essays on the sense of touch. I argue first that touch is much like vision in being unisensory. (This has often been denied). But it is unlike vision in displaying a duality of the proximal and the distal, since it informs us both of the condition of our own bodies, and of the properties of external things. My account of this duality is unorthodox, since I argue that we do not sense distant objects in virtue of sensing the condition of our own bodies. Both forms of touch involve exploratory action—both are forms of haptic perception—but the nature of this involvement is unclear. I defend the view that haptic perceptions are haptic explorations. I first clarify this thesis, then distinguish it from other views, like those of Alva Noë and Susan Hurley, that posit a strong link between action and perception. Despite this interactive nature, touch may seem more constrained than vision and audition in requiring direct bodily contact with objects in the world. I argue against this view, and show that through touch we are capable of sensing objects that are not, and are not perceived as being, in direct contact with our bodies. Here again, touch is somewhat like vision. The development of this account requires conceptual analysis of a range of important issues in the philosophy of perception, including the nature of multisensory experience, the role of bodily awareness in perception, the relation between action and perception, and the structure of non-visual spatial perception. For instance, because touch involves both coordinated bodily movements and a range of distinct sensory receptors in the skin, it is often thought to be a multisensory form of awareness (especially by psychologists). However, this view relies on an implausible conception of multisensory interaction. In its place, I develop a nuanced hierarchy of multisensory involvement according to which touch is a single modality. This is because the various systems involved in touch all predicate or assign sensory properties to the same tangible objects: when we grasp a mug, for instance, many different tactual properties—shape, warmth, texture, etc.—are all felt to belong to the mug. This is similar to what happens in vision with visual objects: when we see an object, a range of different visual properties, largely processed in functionally-distinct systems—are seen as belonging to it. Another unique aspect of my view is the claim that through touch we can experience distal objects—objects not in direct or even apparent contact with our bodies. I develop a positive account of such touch, arguing that distal touch requires (1) a strong interactive connection between our bodies and the distal object (through tools or other such intermediaries) and (2) that distal objects are represented in touch as located in peripersonal space, the space immediately surrounding our bodies, defined by the limits of our exploratory engagement (by how far we can reach or move). This positive account allows for a more robust account of our embodied experience, and shows that touch—at least in some respects—is more like the other senses than typically supposed.

Inaug.-diss.--Würzburg. / Cover title. Dissertation note on half-title. Sonderabdruck aus "Archiv für die gesamte psychologie", bd xvi, 3. u. 4. hft. "Angabe der neueren literatur in gebiete des tastsĭnnes: p. 129-130.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell Univ. / Reprinted from The American journal of psychology, v. 29, pp. 400-419, Oct., 1918. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1910. / "Published [also] as no. 60 of the Psychological Review Monographs, 1912." Includes bibliographical references (p. [87]-89).

No description available.