Haptic perception serves as one of our primary interfaces to the physical world. Without it, our ability to understand and respond to a world full of objects and physical beings would be profoundly impaired.
This dissertation addresses how we reconstruct perceptual representations from the mechanical inputs that occur during haptic interactions. It focuses on the behaviorally relevant information that allows the somatosensory system to achieve its goals, such as enabling the exploration and dexterous manipulation of objects.
The dissertation covers fundamental concepts related to the emergence of stable haptic percepts and presents a series of experimental studies spanning topics from contact detection, through texture and material perception, to the perception of time during haptic interactions. The studies reveal several fundamental mechanisms in haptic perception: an intensity metamer in impact detection where duration and amplitude trade off, the role of propagating vibratory waves for roughness perception, and roughness metamers where different combinations of elasticity and surface features produce identical percepts.
Using a novel dual-property stimulus database and local anesthesia techniques, the work further highlights the crucial role of cutaneous information in softness perception and shows how the lack of cutaneous information can influence the perceived timing of haptic interactions.
Together, the studies uncover essential cues and mechanisms used to perceptually reconstruct different haptic interactions.@en

Ultrasound mid-air haptic (UMH) devices are a novel tool for haptic feedback, capable of providing localized vibrotactile stimuli to users at a distance. UMH applications largely rely on generating tactile shape outlines on the users' skin. Here we investigate how to achieve sensations of continuity or gaps within such two-dimensional curves by studying the perception of pairs of amplitude-modulated focused ultrasound stimuli. On the one hand, we aim to investigate perceptual effects that may arise from providing simultaneous UMH stimuli. On the other hand, we wish to provide perception-based rendering guidelines for generating continuous or discontinuous sensations of tactile shapes. Finally, we hope to contribute toward a measure of the perceptually achievable resolution of UMH interfaces. We performed a user study to identify how far apart two focal points need to be to elicit a perceptual experience of two distinct stimuli separated by a gap. Mean gap detection thresholds were found at 32.3-mm spacing between focal points, but a high within- and between-subject variability was observed. Pairs spaced below 15 mm were consistently (>95%) perceived as a single stimulus, while pairs spaced 45 mm apart were consistently (84%) perceived as two separate stimuli. To investigate the observed variability, we resort to acoustic simulations of the resulting pressure fields. These show a non-linear evolution of actual peak pressure spacing as a function of nominal focal point spacing. Beyond an initial threshold in spacing (between 15 and 18 mm), which we believe to be related to the perceived size of a focal point, the probability of detecting a gap between focal points appears to linearly increase with spacing. Our work highlights physical interactions and perceptual effects to consider when designing or investigating the perception of UMH shapes.

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Temporal binding refers to a systemic bias in the perceived time interval between two related events, most frequently voluntary motor actions and a subsequent sensory effect. An inevitable component of most instrumental motor actions is tactile feedback. Yet, the role of tactile feedback within this phenomenon remains largely unexplored. Here, we used local anesthesia of the index finger to temporarily inhibit incoming sensory input from the finger itself, while participants performed an interval-estimation task in which they estimated the delay between a voluntary motor action (button press) and a second sensory event (click sound). Results were compared to a control condition with intact sensation. While clear binding was present in both conditions, the effect was significantly enhanced when tactile feedback was temporarily removed via local anesthesia. The results are discussed in light of current debates surrounding the underlying mechanisms and function of this temporal bias.

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It is known that the duration of a short stimulus affects the perceived intensity of both visual, auditory, and, vibrotactile events, but it is still unclear whether such a relationship also exists for mid-air ultrasonic inputs to the hand. Here we investigate this issue and show how the perceived intensity of focused ultrasonic stimulations of the palm is indeed systematically related to stimulus duration - a relationship that is, however, independent of modulation frequency. This is an important finding for the overall goal of providing perceptually stronger inputs and enlarging the repertoire of realistic mid-air haptic experiences. @en

Attentional cueing tasks using gaze direction as spatial cues have sometimes yielded an early directing attention negativity (EDAN) component in the ERP, presumably reflecting the initial orienting toward the cued location. However, other studies have failed to identify an EDAN component for gaze cues, yielding an inconsistent picture. In the present study, we re-examined the EDAN to gaze cueing, using a continuous task where the specific direction of the gaze changes was task irrelevant. Face stimuli changed gaze direction several times during each trial between direct, left-, and right-averted positions. Participants counted the number of gaze shifts during the trial. Results showed an unusually large EDAN-like ERP asymmetry at posterior scalp sites that was of similar amplitude for large and small gaze shifts into the periphery. Shifts from an averted position toward a direct gaze elicited a qualitatively similar but smaller effect than shifts into the periphery. Together, these findings shed new light on gaze-elicited spatial attention as they indicate a reflexive attention orienting, following the direction of gaze motion, even when the gaze direction itself is irrelevant for the task.@en