What you touch is what you get: Self-assessing a minimalist tactile sensory substitution device

In this work we study the links between subjective and objective measures of both performance and task difficulty, with a minimalist tactile sensory substitution device. We considered both psychophysical variables and subjective measures in a haptic discrimination task performed by blindfolded sighted subjects. We show that task difficulty significantly affects haptic sensitivity, perceived performance and perceived difficulty. Moreover subjects are able to predict their own performance. Results seem not to depend on fatigue. Therefore our device seems to show that “What You Touch Is What You Get”. Our device is thought to deliver tactile maps with touch: visually impaired subjects can potentially take advantage of independently evaluating their own performance.