The effect of hand position and pattern motion on temporal order judgments

Subjects made temporal order judgments (TOJs) of tactile stimuli presented to the fingerpads. The subjects judged which one of two locations had been stimulated first. The tactile stimuli were patterns that simulated movement across the fingerpads. Although irrelevant to the task, the direction of movement of the patterns biased the TOJs. If the pattern at one location moved in the direction of the second location, the subjects tended to judge the first location as leading the second location. If the pattern moved in the opposite direction, that location was judged as trailing. In a series of experiments, the effect of the spatial position of the hands and fingers on TOJs and the perception of the direction of pattern movement were examined. Changing the position of the hands so that the patterns no longer moved directly toward each other reduced or eliminated the effect of motion on TOJs. In a variation of Aristotle's illusion, the moving patterns were presented to crossed and uncrossed fingers. The results indicated that, contrary to Aristotle's illusion, the subjects processed the moving patterns relative to an environmental framework, rather than to the local direction of motion on the fingerpads. Presenting the patterns to crossed hands produced results similar to those obtained with crossed fingers: The subjects processed the patterns according to an environmental framework.