Influence of exploration time on haptic and visual matching of complex shape

The time adult Ss were allowed to explore stimuli was varied during intra- and cross-model equivalence matching involving vision and touch. Increasing time to explore either each standard, each comparison, or both standard and comparison from 4 to 16 sec significantly improved haptic intramodel matching. However, cross-modal matching, from either vision to touch or touch to vision, improved significantly only when time to explore each standard was increased. Videotape recordings of Ss’ hand movements revealed use of a greater variety of haptic scanning strategies by Ss in groups where increased exploration time enhanced accuracy. The difference in effects of exploration time on intra- compared to cross-model shape matching was discussed in terms of possible differences in requirements between the two tasks.