Cite as:
Kitada R, Sadato N, Lederman S J, 2012, "Tactile perception of nonpainful unpleasantness in relation to perceived roughness: Effects of inter-element spacing and speed of relative motion of rigid 2-D raised-dot patterns at two body loci" Perception 41(2) 204 – 220
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Tactile perception of nonpainful unpleasantness in relation to perceived roughness: Effects of inter-element spacing and speed of relative motion of rigid 2-D raised-dot patterns at two body loci

Ryo Kitada, Norihiro Sadato, Susan J Lederman

Received 2 November 2011, in revised form 2 February 2012; published online 12 March 2012

Abstract. Rigid surfaces consisting of spatially jittered 2-D raised-dot patterns with different inter-element spacings were moved back and forth across the skin at three different speeds (10-fold range). Within each psychophysical experiment, participants numerically estimated the perceived magnitude of either unpleasantness (nonpainful) or roughness of 2-D raised-dot surfaces applied to two stationary body sites (experiment 1: fingers; experiment 2: forearm). The psychophysical functions for the two types of perceptual judgment were highly similar at both body loci; more specifically, the perceived magnitude of unpleasantness and roughness both increased monotonically as a power function of increasing inter-element spacing, with the rate of growth declining at the upper end of the continuum. These results suggest that inter-element spacing is a critical determinant of the perceived magnitude of unpleasantness (nonpainful), as well as of roughness. Each perceptual judgment also increased as a function of increasing relative speed at both body loci. However, the magnitude of this effect was significantly greater for perceived unpleasantness than for perceived roughness; conversely, the speed effect was significantly greater on the forearm than on the fingers. Several possible explanations for these findings are considered.
Keywords: touch; roughness; pleasantness; somatosensory; material perception.

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