The lability of the tactile-kinaesthetic framework

This paper is concerned with the ability to recognize settings of a rod (pivoted at the centre) at various angles of tilt without the use of vision. Five angles of tilt, all within the upper right quadrant, were used and 80 subjects took part in the experiments. It is shown that tactile-kinaesthetic recognition of a given angle of tilt is decidedly poor, subjects commonly reporting that the position of the rod had been changed. The direction of these subjective shifts was found to be in general towards the centre of the quadrant. If, following the recognition experiments, the subjects were required to judge settings of the rod in fact vertical and horizontal, errors made tended to be in a direction opposite to that normally found in making these judgements. It was further found that attempts to reinstate the original settings led to mean judgements equivalent to those given on the recognition tests, but with signs reversed. These various phenomena are ascribed to lability and disorganization of the tactile-kinaesthetic framework. An analogy with the autokinetic phenomenon is adduced.