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Tactile masking within and between hands: Insights for spatial coding of touch at the fingers

Tamè, Luigi, Farnè, Alessandro, Pavani, Francesco (2008) Tactile masking within and between hands: Insights for spatial coding of touch at the fingers. In: Body Representation Workshop, 16-22 July 2008, Bologna, Italy. (doi:Working Poster No. 58) (KAR id:98973)

Abstract

A tactile stimulus at the fingers can be encoded according to multiple reference frames (hand‐ , body‐ or space‐specific). We examined the relative importance of these reference frames by adapting a tactile masking paradigm for stimuli at the index or middle fingers of either hand (unseen). In Exp.1, participants performed a go‐no‐go task to detect a vibrotactile target at a pre‐specified finger (e.g., right index), when this was presented alone or with a concurrent distractor either on the same hand (right middle finger), or on the opposite hand (at homologous or non‐homologous locations with respect to the target finger; e.g., left index or left middle finger, respectively). Tactile masking emerged under double stimulation, both for a distractor within the target‐hand and for distractors at the non‐homologous location on the opposite hand. This suggests use of hand‐specific (than body‐ or space‐specific) reference frames when solving this task. In Exp.2, one hand rotated by 180° around the wrist in half of the trials. Masking effects changed only between‐hands. Intriguingly, masking from the non‐ homologous finger reduced only when the hand that changed posture contained the target. This suggests that spatial coding for touches at the fingers depend upon the behavioural relevance of tactile stimuli.

Item Type: Conference or workshop item (Poster)
DOI/Identification number: Working Poster No. 58
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology > BF41 Psychology and philosophy
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Luigi Tame
Date Deposited: 07 Dec 2022 20:48 UTC
Last Modified: 07 Dec 2022 20:48 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/98973 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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