The contribution of proprioceptive and cutaneous cues in weight perception: Early evidence for maximum-likelihood integration

Abstract

When manipulating an object we use weight information in order to apply an effective grip to prevent it from slipping as well effective arm muscular force to maintain a desirable distance from the ground. In such task, the main sources of weight information that we use may come from cutaneous and proprioception feedback. Even though the contribution of these two cues has been partially demonstrated, there is no evidence about their relative importance in weight perception. Here, we conducted a weight discrimination experiment using a 2IFC constant stimuli procedure to investigate the role of cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback in weight perception. The participants judged weights using both proprioception and cutaneous cues, proprioception-only cues and cutaneous-only cues. Preliminary results showed that performance deteriorates when either of these cues is missing. There is also an early indication that the two cues may be integrated on the basis of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). © 2010 Springer-Verlag.