School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2AS, United Kingdom.
Neuropsychologia. 2011 Jul;49(9):2703-10. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.05.018. Epub 2011 May 30.
This study investigated the organising principles of touch. We examined specialisations within the haptic system and their hemispheric distribution. Haptic processing consists of the integration of data from multiple sources to form a single percept. Previous research provides strong support for a hierarchical and functional distribution within haptic processing. We investigated hemispheric asymmetry in haptic discrimination of objects with differing textures and centres of mass. By analogy with vision it was hypothesised that participants would demonstrate a left-hand advantage for centre of mass discrimination (a 'global', presumed right hemisphere, judgement) and a right-hand advantage for surface texture judgements (a 'local', presumed left hemisphere discrimination). We found that left-handed participants showed these effects to a lesser degree than did the right-handers, consistent with the notion that left-handed people generally show weaker asymmetries in bimanual tasks. In a second experiment the effect of conflicting information on haptic percept formation was investigated. Following from the previous hypotheses it was predicted that participants would be more accurate with their right hands at judging conflicting surfaces. Contrary to predictions an advantage was demonstrated for the left hand for texture discrimination and for the right hand for centre of mass judgement.
本研究旨在探究触觉的组织原则。我们考察了触觉系统内的专业化分工及其半球分布。触觉处理包括整合来自多个来源的数据，以形成单一的感知。先前的研究为触觉处理中的层次化和功能分布提供了强有力的支持。我们研究了在触觉辨别不同质地和质心的物体时的半球不对称性。类比于视觉，我们假设参与者将表现出对质心辨别（“全局”，假定的右半球判断）的左手优势，以及对表面质地判断（“局部”，假定的左半球判断）的右手优势。我们发现，左利手参与者的这些效应比右利手参与者的效应小，这与左利手者在双手任务中通常表现出较弱的不对称性的观点一致。在第二个实验中，我们研究了冲突信息对触觉感知形成的影响。根据之前的假设，我们预测参与者在判断冲突表面时右手会更准确。与预测相反，对于纹理辨别，左手具有优势，而对于质心判断，右手具有优势。
