Otto Selz Institute for Applied Psychology, University of Mannheim Mannheim, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2010 Dec 13;1:206. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00206. eCollection 2010.
In the past, sensory saltation phenomena (Geldard and Sherrick, 1972) have been used repeatedly to analyze the spatiotemporal integration capacity of somatosensory and other sensory mechanisms by means of their psychophysical characteristic. The core phenomenon consists in a systematic mislocalization of one tactile stimulus (the attractee) toward another successive tactile stimulus (the attractant) presented at another location, increasing with shorter intervals. In a series of four experiments, sensory saltation characteristics were studied at the forearm and the abdomen. Participants reported the perceived positions of attractees, attractants, and reference stimuli by pointing. In general, saltation characteristics compared well to those reported in previous studies, but we were able to gain several new insights regarding this phenomenon: (a) the attractee-attractant interval did not exclusively affect the perceived attractee position, but also the perceived attractant position; (b) saltation characteristics were very similar at different body sites and orientations, but did show differences suggesting anisotropy (direction-dependency) in the underlying integration processes; (c) sensory saltation could be elicited with stimulation patterns crossing the body midline on the abdomen. In addition to the saltation-specific results, our experiments demonstrate that pointing reports of perceived positions on the body surface generally show pronounced systematic biases compared to veridical positions, moderate intraindividual consistency, and a high degree of inter-individual variability. Finally, we address methodological and terminological controversies concerning the sensory saltation paradigm and discuss its possible neurophysiological basis.
过去，人们反复利用感觉跳跃现象（Geldard 和 Sherrick，1972）通过其心理物理学特征来分析躯体感觉和其他感觉机制的时空整合能力。核心现象包括一个触觉刺激物（吸引物）向另一个在不同位置呈现的连续触觉刺激物（吸引剂）的系统误定位，这种误定位随着间隔时间的缩短而增加。在一系列四项实验中，我们研究了前臂和腹部的感觉跳跃特征。参与者通过指向报告感知到的吸引物、吸引剂和参考刺激的位置。总的来说，跳跃特征与之前研究报告的特征非常吻合，但我们也获得了一些关于这一现象的新见解：（a）吸引物-吸引剂间隔不仅会影响感知到的吸引物位置，还会影响感知到的吸引剂位置；（b）跳跃特征在不同的身体部位和方向上非常相似，但确实存在差异，表明基础整合过程存在各向异性（方向依赖性）；（c）在腹部，刺激模式可以跨越身体中线，从而引发跳跃现象。除了跳跃现象的具体结果外，我们的实验还表明，与真实位置相比，身体表面感知位置的指向报告通常表现出明显的系统偏差、适度的个体内一致性和高度的个体间变异性。最后，我们讨论了关于感觉跳跃范式的方法学和术语争议，并讨论了其可能的神经生理学基础。
