Dynamic Touch by Hand and Head During Walking: Protective Behavior for the Head?

Abstract

We investigated perception of the extent of an object held in the hand or attached to the head during walking. Participants wielded an occluded, weighted rod by hand and by head and reported the perceived location of the rod end (relative to a virtual vertical line) while walking and while standing. There was an unexpected effect of body part on perceived location of the rod end. In particular, participants stood or walked so that the rod end was farther away from the vertical line when wielding with the head than wielding with the hand. It is possible that differences between the tasks and the relative costs of a collision influenced the locomotory behavior in each condition.

Keywords:

• Dynamic touch
• haptic perception
• person-plus-object system
• walking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Given that all participants completed all three tasks, it might be argued that some of the effects (or lack thereof) could be due to order or carryover effects across tasks. To evaluate this, we investigated both (a) the effect of order of body part used for wielding in each task and (b) the effect of the order the three tasks on performance. We did not find any apparent order effects. Therefore, we believe that contaminations across the tasks or conditions was unlikely.