Tactile spatial discrimination on the torso using vibrotactile and force stimulation

There is a steadily growing number of mobile communication systems that provide spatially encoded tactile information to the humans’ torso. However, the increased use of such hands-off displays is currently not matched with or supported by systematic perceptual characterization of tactile spatial discrimination on the torso. Furthermore, there are currently no data testing spatial discrimination for dynamic force stimuli applied to the torso. In the present study, we measured tactile point localization (LOC) and tactile direction discrimination (DIR) on the thoracic spine using two unisex torso-worn tactile vests realized with arrays of 3 × 3 vibrotactile or force feedback actuators. We aimed to, first, evaluate and compare the spatial discrimination of vibrotactile and force stimulations on the thoracic spine and, second, to investigate the relationship between the LOC and DIR results across stimulations. Thirty-four healthy participants performed both tasks with both vests. Tactile accuracies for vibrotactile and force stimulations were 60.7% and 54.6% for the LOC task; 71.0% and 67.7% for the DIR task, respectively. Performance correlated positively with both stimulations, although accuracies were higher for the vibrotactile than for the force stimulation across tasks, arguably due to specific properties of vibrotactile stimulations. We observed comparable directional anisotropies in the LOC results for both stimulations; however, anisotropies in the DIR task were only observed with vibrotactile stimulations. We discuss our findings with respect to tactile perception research as well as their implications for the design of high-resolution torso-mounted tactile displays for spatial cueing. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00221-021-06181-x.