Seeing and touching aesthetic objects: I. Judgments

Abstract

An equivalence position on the senses holds that vision and touch provide similar information. Handcrafted ceramic vessels, with their potent visual and tactile properties, should therefore be similarly judged by vision and touch. Twelve affective, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive rating scales were used to compare visual, tactile, and combined visual-tactile input. In Experiment 1, subjects (N=58) were presented with aesthetic ceramic objects; in Experiment 2, subjects (N=24) were asked to imagine such objects; and in Experiment 3, subjects (N=29) were provided with broken ceramic scraps. In the latter experiment, unlike in Experiments 1 and 2, the same subjects were given all three modes of input. All studies found similarities rather than differences between the modes of presentation; and correlations between vision, touch, and vision-touch were high (i.e., equivalence between the senses was evident). © 1986, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.