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    More than skin-deep: integration of skin-based and musculo-skeletal reference frames in localisation of touch

    Sadibolova, Renata and Tamè, Luigi and Longo, Matthew R. (2018) More than skin-deep: integration of skin-based and musculo-skeletal reference frames in localisation of touch. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 44 (11), pp. 1672-1682. ISSN 0096-1523.

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    Abstract

    The skin of the forearm is, in one sense, a flat 2D sheet, but in another sense approximately cylindrical, mirroring the 3D volumetric shape of the arm. The role of frames of reference based on the skin as a 2D sheet versus based on the musculo-skeletal structure of the arm remains unclear. When we rotate the forearm from a pronated to a supinated posture, the skin on its surface is displaced. Thus, a marked location will slide with the skin across the underlying flesh, and the touch perceived at this location should follow this displacement if it is localised within a skin-based reference frame. We investigated, however, if the perceived tactile locations were also affected by the rearrangement in underlying musculo-skeletal structure, i.e. displaced medially and laterally on a pronated and supinated forearm, respectively. Participants pointed to perceived touches (Experiment 1), or marked them on a three-dimensional size-matched forearm on a computer screen (Experiment 2). The perceived locations were indeed displaced medially after forearm pronation in both response modalities. This misperception was reduced (Experiment 1), or absent altogether (Experiment 2) in the supinated posture when the actual stimulus grid moved laterally with the displaced skin. The grid was perceptually stretched at medial-lateral axis, and it was displaced distally, which suggest the influence of skin-based factors. Our study extends the tactile localisation literature focused on the skin-based reference frame and on the effects of spatial positions of body parts by implicating the musculo-skeletal factors in localisation of touch on the body.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: ©American Psychological Association 2018. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at the DOI cited above.
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Depositing User: Matthew Longo
    Date Deposited: 27 Apr 2018 08:58
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:41
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/22235

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