Is There Anything out There?: A Study of Distal Attribution in Response to Vibrotactile Stimulation

Abstract

Patterns of vibrotactile stimulation were delivered to the index fingertips of naive blindfolded subjects. The attributions made by these subjects when they were allowed to experience transformations of vibrotactile stimulation correlated with self-movement were assessed. Although the subjects became aware of the relationship between self-movement and stimulation transformation, they never developed the hypothesis of distal attribution, ie the hypothesis that the ultimate cause of their vibrotactile experience was an encounter with an object in the environment. It is proposed that further investigations of the course of acquisition of distal attribution in the situation described may be instructive in the study of externalization in other modalities.