Active and Passive Touch: the Influence of Exploration Time on Form Recognition

In a study of the effect of self-produced movement on tactual form recognition 30 male and 30 female college students actively or passively touched cooky -cutter forms with the preferred index finger to identify the shapes. In a static passive condition, the forms were pressed on the fingers. Ss were limited to either 5 or 30 sec of stimulus exposure time. Results indicate that active touch was superior to either passive static or passive sequential touch. Adding stimulus change failed to improve performance. Recognition accuracy was greater with 30 sec of exposure, but 5 sec of active touch produced accuracy equivalent to that produced by longer periods of passive stimulation.