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Humans Terminate Their Haptic Explorations According to an Interplay of Task Demands and Motor Effort

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Haptics: Understanding Touch; Technology and Systems; Applications and Interaction (EuroHaptics 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14768))

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Abstract

Haptic exploration is an inherently active process by which humans gather sensory information through physical contact with objects. It has been proposed that humans generally optimize their exploration behavior to improve perception. We hypothesized that the duration of haptic explorations is the result of an optimal interplay of sensory and predictive processes, also taking costs such as motor effort into account. We assessed exploration duration and task performance in a two-alternative forced-choice spatial frequency discrimination task under varying conditions of task demand and motor effort. We manipulated task demands by varying the discriminability of virtual grating stimuli and manipulated motor effort by implementing forces counteracting the participants’ movements while switching between stimuli. Participants were instructed to switch between stimuli after each swipe movement. Results revealed that higher task demands lead to higher numbers of exploratory movements (i.e. longer exploration duration), likely reflecting a compensatory mechanism that enables participants to attain a certain level of task performance. However, this effect is reduced when motor effort is increased; while low and medium task demands yield similar numbers of movements regardless of related motor effort, higher demands are not associated with increased numbers of movements when the required motor effort is high. In conclusion, the extent to which increased task demands are compensated via the extension of an exploration seems to depend on the motor costs that the agent is confronted with.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Marai Söhngen, Kimberly Glas and Lars Hagenmeier for their help with data collection. This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project number 222641018 – SFB/TRR 135, A5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Justus-Liebig University, 35390, Giessen, Germany

    Michaela Jeschke & Knut Drewing

  2. Bournemouth University, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK

    Anna Metzger

Authors
  1. Michaela Jeschke
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  2. Anna Metzger
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  3. Knut Drewing
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Correspondence to Michaela Jeschke .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

    Hiroyuki Kajimoto

  2. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Pedro Lopes

  3. CNRS, Rennes, France

    Claudio Pacchierotti

  4. Koc University, Istanbul, Türkiye

    Cagatay Basdogan

  5. Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, Italy

    Monica Gori

  6. University of Lille, Lille, France

    Betty Lemaire-Semail

  7. University of Rennes, Rennes, France

    Maud Marchal

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Jeschke, M., Metzger, A., Drewing, K. (2025). Humans Terminate Their Haptic Explorations According to an Interplay of Task Demands and Motor Effort. In: Kajimoto, H., et al. Haptics: Understanding Touch; Technology and Systems; Applications and Interaction. EuroHaptics 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14768. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70058-3_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70058-3_7

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