» Published on
8. April 2016
How the Index Finger Can Be Fooled
Cognitive scientists at CITEC discover new perceptual illusion
Fingers
are a human’s most important tactile sensors, but they do not always
sense accurately and can even be deceived. Researchers at the Cluster of
Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) demonstrated this
in a new study in which they ‘outwit’ human perception. Test subjects
placed their index finger in an apparatus and touched an object whose
softness changed at random without the person noticing. While touching
the object, the test subjects were under the illusion that it was the
position of their finger that changed, not the softness of the object.
The curious thing here was that the test subjects felt an “illusory”
finger displacement, much larger in extent than the actual, “real”
displacement. The researchers published their findings this Thursday, 7
April in the scientific journal “Current Biology.”
»
read more