Perceiving heaviness by dynamic touch: An investigation of the size-weight illusion in preschoolers
نویسندگان
چکیده
This study investigates preschoolers’ ability to perceive the heaviness of objects by dynamic touch, a perceptual system that relies on the use of the muscle as a sensory organ. In total, 18 preschoolers were asked to hold objects by a handle without being able to see them. The 9 objects differed in mass and volume, allowing us to test the size–weight illusion by dynamic touch. Children were asked in the context of a game to make judgments about the heaviness of the objects. Even the youngest children were sensitive to the rotational inertia of objects, a property that is commonly used by adults to determine the heaviness of an object. Rotational inertia is a function of both volume and mass. This suggests that the size–weight illusion in children is due not to a process of intermodal integration but to children’s sensitivity to invariant properties of the input.
منابع مشابه
Dissociable neural mechanisms for determining the perceived heaviness of objects and the predicted weight of objects during lifting: An fMRI investigation of the size-weight illusion
In size-weight (SW) illusions, people learn to scale their fingertip forces for lifting small and big objects of equal weight even though they fail to learn perceptually that both objects have the same weight. The question then arises as to what the separate neural mechanisms are for determining the perceived heaviness of objects and the predicted weight of these objects during lifting. To answ...
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