Retention of Shape Information under Haptic or Visual Acquisition

Abstract

Memory for information on shape perceived haptically was compared with memory for the same shapes perceived visually, and under conditions where acquisition occurred through one system and matching through another. Significantly better matching was found for the visual groups at each of 3 retention intervals: 5, 15, and 30 sec. Accuracy of intramodal visual matching showed no decline with increasing retention intervals. Haptic memory was poorer and declined only slightly with the longer retention intervals. Data for the intermodal groups indicated that, where acquisition was accomplished visually, retention was higher. The importance of 2 sets of factors is considered, modality of acquisition and direction of intermodal matching between visual and haptic systems. Implications of these findings for some recent models of information translation across modalities are discussed.