Investigating the Effect of Sensory Concurrency on Learning Haptic Spatiotemporal Signals

A new generation of multimodal interfaces and interactions is emerging. Drawing on the principles Sensory Substitution Augmentation Devices (SSADs), these offer potential for rich, immersive human-computer interactions, but are difficult to design well, take time master, creating significant barriers towards wider adoption. Following a review literature surrounding existing SSADs, their metrics success growing influence interface in Human Computer Interaction, we present medium term (4-day) study comparing effectiveness various combinations visual haptic feedback (sensory concurrencies) preparing users perform virtual maze navigation task using alone. Participants navigated 12 mazes each 3 separate sessions under specific combination feedback, before performing same Visual sensory deprivation was shown be inferior & concurrency enabling signal comprehension, while hybridized condition combining reduced with superior. Potential explanations hybrid mechanism explored, scope implications its generalization presented.