Touch is one of the five senses, which is located all over the body. Touch makes a response to temperature and pressure. Heat, cold, and touch stimuli are received by end organs or sensory receptors on the skin. Touch is considered more than a single sense. The human brain consists of receptors that will receive the feelings when we touch something. There the feeling of cold, hot, or pain is registered. An object’s size and shape can be judged by using this sense based on visual.
Vision and touch can both provide information about an object’s shape and size. Some people say that touch is an independent sense. According to Hannah B.Helbig and Marc O.Ernst, they state that touch and vision is integrated into a unified perception “Bimodal shape estimates are more reliable than rely on either vision or touch alone.” (Hannah B.Helbig & Marc O.Ernst 2007, pg.604). An obvious example is blind people; they are not able to identify some objects when they just touch them. Therefore, we could assume that touch and vision is incorporated perception.
As touch related with vision, we sometimes can describe things when we touch but it is not able to tell us the details about colour that comes up with vision. In this case, we assume that vision consists of shape and colour. If so, a question that will comes after this is “Which sense is more important as a primary perception between touch and vision?” The assumption for the answer is “vision”. Before we explain for the answer, there is also a question in perception aspect, “What will happen if we lost touch?” and “What will happen if we lost vision?” If we lost touch, we are still able to see what the object, shape, or colour is. On the other hand, if we lost sight, we might not able to indicate the shape, colour, and any details of the object. Thus, we suppose vision is more important than touch.
For example, if we touch a lemon without seeing it. We might assume that it is an orange, whereas everything is clear when we just have a look at it.
Even though the assumption of sense tells us that perception is divided into separate domains of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Besides that, some might think that touch and vision is working separately. In fact, touch can’t be separated from vision as it always operates together. “It has been shown recently that human observers integrate visual and haptic size information in a statistically optimal fashion, in the sense that the integrated estimate is most reliable.” (Ernst and Banks cited in Helbig, Hannah B & Ernst, Marc O 2002, pg.415) This shows that when those two senses are operated together, they assure us the most reliable information we perceive.
References:
Robies-De-La-Torre, G 2006, 'The Importance of the Sense of Touch in Virtual and Real Environments', IEEE Multimedia, vol.13, issue 3, Page 24-30, EJS E-Journals, EBSCOhost, AN 9979210, viewed 18 September 2007.
Magnenat-Thalmann, N & Bonanni, U 2006, 'Haptics in Virtual Reality and Multimedia', IEEE Multimedia, vol.13, issue 3, Page 6-11, EJS E-Journals, EBSCOhost, AN 9979207, viewed 18 September 2007.
'The Five Senses', World Almanac for Kids, Page 102-103, Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre, EBSCOhost, AN 22692073, viewed 18 September 2007.
Helbig, Hannah B & Ernst, Marc O 2007, 'Optimal integration of shape information from vision and touch', Experimental Brain Research, Vol. 179, Issue 4, Page 595-606, EJS E-Journals, EBSCOhost, AN 11540015, viewed 18 September 2007.
September 18, 2007
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