ABSTRACT
Is it possible to know something just by touching it? Touch differs from vision and hearing in that it depends on contact and on the quality of proximal reception. Because of this property, the tactual perceptual field is limited to the zone of contact with objects. In passive tactile perception (cutaneous perception), the perceptual field is limited and has the exact dimensions of the surface of the skin in contact with the stimulus. In most cases, in order to apprehend the whole object, voluntary movements must be made to compensate for the smallness of the tactile perceptual field. The kinaesthetic perception resulting from these movements is closely linked to cutaneous perception and they form active touch or haptic perception. As a result, object perception in the haptic mode is highly sequential. This latter property increases the load on working memory and requires a mental recognition and synthesis to obtain a unified representation of the object (J.J. Gibson, 1966; Revesz, 1950; see Hatwell, Streri, & Gentaz, 2003).
