Haptic perception of wetness

W.M. Bergmann Tiest, N.D. Kosters, Astrid M.L. Kappers, H.A.M. Daanen

    Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    In daily life, people interact with textiles of different degrees of wetness, but little is known about the mechanics of wetness perception. This paper describes an experiment with six conditions regarding haptic discrimination of the wetness of fabrics. Three materials were used: cotton wool, sponge-structured viscose and thin viscose. Two ways of touching were investigated: static touching, in which only thermal cues were available, and dynamic touching, in which additional mechanical cues were available. For dynamic touching, average Weber fractions for discrimination were around 0.3, whereas for static touching, they ranged from 0.34 to 0.63. The results show that people can make use of the additional mechanical cues to significantly improve their discrimination performance. There was no significant difference between Weber fractions for the three materials, showing that wetness can be judged as a separate perceptual quantity, independent of the material. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)159-163
    JournalActa Psychologica
    Volume141
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

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