The veridical perception of object temperature with varying skin temperature

Abstract

The effect of skin-adaptation temperature on object-temperature perception was investigated, using the method of dichiric matching, in an attempt to determine whether veridical perception of physical object temperature occurs in human subjects. Observers were presented with a test temperature on one hand and required to find a matching temperature, that is, one that produced the same sensation, on the other, differently adapted, hand. Using equality of test and matching temperatures as a criterion of veridical perception, it was found that the latter improves with ΔT, the difference between object temperature and skin-adaptation temperature. It is postulated that when ΔT is close to zero, veridical perception of object temperature is sacrificed to allow for improved performance in distinguishing object materials, whereas at high positive and negative values of ΔT, veridical perception is preserved so that object temperature can be correctly identified. A mechanism is proposed in which veridical perception can be achieved by means of parallel processing of static and dynamic temperature information. © 1988 Psychonomic Society, Inc.