Sensory Substitution

Abstract

The idea that the cutaneous surface may be employed as a substitute for the eyes and ears is by no means a modern notion. Although the sense of touch has long been considered as a surrogate for both the visual and auditory modalities, the focus of this chapter will be on the efforts to develop a tactile substitute for hearing, especially that of human speech. The visual system is our primary means of processing information about environmental space such as orientation, distance, direction and size. It is much less effective in making temporal discriminations. The auditory system is unparalleled in processing information that involves rapid sequences of temporal events, such as speech and music. The tactile sense is capable of processing both spatial and temporal information although not as effective in either domain as the eye or the ear.