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Project

Gestalt formation in the haptic modality.

Gestalt principles have been used to explain how our brain organises incoming information. If these Gestalt principles arise from the nature of the objects in the world and the way our brain functions, they should operate similarly in all sensory modalities. A great amount of research on Gestalt formation has been conducted in the visual and auditory domain. However, haptic Gestalt formation has received only little attention. To be able to perceive an object haptically one needs to combine touch with proprioception (knowledge about where our limbs are). The fact that the haptic modality seems to give equal weight to spatial and temporal information makes it very special. The first goal in the current proposal is to investigate the Gestalt principles in haptic perception. It is generally assumed that Gestalt formation is an automatic and efficient process and therefore relates to the amount of processing resources that is used. A second goal in this proposal is to investigate inter-individual differences in the use of haptic Gestalts as they relate to adult age (people with less resources) and expertise (people who are very efficient at processing incoming information).
Date:1 Oct 2010 →  30 Sep 2013
Keywords:Expertise, Proprioception, Touch, Haptics, Psychology, Gestalt, Perception, Aging
Disciplines:Animal experimental and comparative psychology, Applied psychology, Human experimental psychology, Biological and physiological psychology