Hi Franck,

I am not sure whether this question can be answered in a scientific way at all. The reason is that probably we would compare apples with oranges. Most important will be to define which kind of processing one wants to compare: e.g., object detection (is an object present?), object recognition (is this object XY?), or object assessment (e.g. how rough or how hard, etc. is the object?)? And even if you have defined this, it is important to fix some parameters, e.g. the tau, so the speed of approaching the object, how the move has to be executed (e.g. radial, tangential) and how much pressure has to be used when haptically approaching the object.

Etc. etc. And then it highly depends on the shape and the complexity and the size of the object how fast the haptic processing goes on.

In sum, you see there are many questions open before your question can be answered.

Best wishes,

CCC

I agree with CCC above that many factors come into play that would be important for finding the minimum reaction time for a modality.  However, many investigators have looked at  processing/reaction time to the same stimulus across sensory modalities.  Here are just a few:

The classic introduction to touch reaction time: Lele, P. P., D. C. Sinclair, and G. Weddell. "The reaction time to touch." The Journal of physiology 123.1 (1954): 187-203.

Jordan et al compared learning a motor task with separate or integrated sensory modalities. Jordan, Timothy C. "Characteristics of visual and proprioceptive response times in the learning of a motor skill." The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology 24.4 (1972): 536-543.

Harrar et al did an interesting study comparing processing and reaction times  to small lights touching different parts of the body.   Harrar, Vanessa, and Laurence R. Harris. "Simultaneity constancy: detecting events with touch and vision." Experimental Brain Research 166.3-4 (2005): 465-473.

Finally, another approach is Sarno et al who looked at “normal” subjects and subjects with different TBIs to compare multisensory integration of reaction times.  They concluded changes in “touch” is more difficult to integrate.  Sarno, Stefania, et al. "Multisensory integration after traumatic brain injury: a reaction time study between pairings of vision, touch and audition." Brain Injury 17.5 (2003): 413-426.

Hi Franck, 

There is some evidence to suggest that response to haptic warnings is faster than auditory, which is faster than visual. See the study I've attached by Ng and Chan for this exact comparison. This seems to follow our basic understanding on human information processing that RT for visual stimulus is 250ms, 170ms for an audio stimulus, 150ms seconds for a touch stimulus.

However, I would echo what CCC has said and say that I think that context is hugely important when you are considering the modality of your information. For example, in the context of driving lower reaction times to hazards have always been seen as preferable, however in highly automated driving reacting faster may not necessarily be a good thing: suppose a driver who has been out-of-the-loop has to determine whether to take back control from a highly automated vehicle, depending on the complexity of that scenario reaction time will be more or less important. Here, the quality of the reaction/response is probably more important/useful than simply seeing how fast a driver can resume control. In this consideration of context it goes without say that the meaning of the warning to your participants, and what they are expected to do as a result of that warning, is going to have a big influence on the results you get.

I know Rob Gray at Arizona State has done some work on vibrotactile warnings in the context of driving. It may be useful to have a look at his publications, here: https://webapp4.asu.edu/directory/person/391944

I look forward to seeing the other responses to this, and also to the idea of creating tri-sensory combinations, as per Hecht and Reiner (2009): http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-008-1626-z#page-1

All the best, 

Ty

Thanks a lot to the three of you for your help. It's really appreciated.

@CCC: My question was obviously not specific enough. I am aware that RT depends on many characteristics of the task. I am specifically interested in the early stages of information processing, i.e detection and recogniition, assessed in very simple tasks.

@Carl: Very helpful reference suggestions. I cannot put my hand on the Jordan paper, however. That's a shame, because that's the only one that used proprioceptive rather than tactile cues.

@Tyron: Thanks for the paper and the thoughtful answer. I know about Rob Gray's work, which is great and highly relevant for researchers in our field. However, he mainly used vibrotactile stimulation. I would like to know more about reactions to perturbation in the force feedback, for instance. 

Hi Franck, 

It's a pleasure. I've attached the Jordan paper for you.

I guess you have looked at the work that guys from TU Delft (Erwin Boer (who is now a visiting prof in our research group), Abbink, Mulder & co) have done (see attached paper as eg)? Does this at all help you with that you are looking at? However, I know it is more applied and less fundamental than you are looking for.

I'd be interested to know if there has been any work done on this, as I think shared haptic control is a neat idea and may well help solve a lot of the human-out-of-the-loop issues in the transitions of control.

All the best,

Ty

Perfect! I just read the Jordan paper and it's exactly the kind of study I am looking for. Thanks again Carl and Tyron.

I know the Delft group very well actually. Great people and great scientists. Say Hi to Erwin for me when you meet him next time. I have done a few studies on haptic shared control myself. See attached files.

Salut Franck

D'un point de vue tout à fait personnel et surtout pas scientifique, il me semble que je réagis plus vite à un stimulus haptique qu'à un stimulus visuel. Mais cette réaction est plutôt brutale  et pourrait à la limite être dangereuse... 

A+

I believe this paper may help you in examining this: 

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-008-1410-0#page-1

 Interesting suggestion. Thanks, Denton.

I can chime in from the high-level side a bit (I know it's a little off-tangent, since though you said you're interested in the early stages, but nonetheless perhaps interesting).

Typically, when talking about recognition of objects, one gives twice the exploration time for haptics compared to vision - this number is (as far as I know) - rather arbitrary, but works well in practice.

(e.g., from our work: Visual and haptic perceptual spaces show high similarity in humans. N Gaißert, C Wallraven, HH Bülthoff, Journal of vision 10 (11), 2)

If you're interested, we did some humble research on how to train people in a visual serial task (recognizing faces by means of an aperture). We found that, initially, people are very very similar in serialized visual recognition compared to haptics, whereas later on they do learn to use new strategies, also becoming significantly faster.

(Serial exploration of faces: comparing vision and touch. L Dopjans, HH Bülthoff, C Wallraven, Journal of vision 12 (1), 6)

Best

Christian

I will have a look. Thanks.

Hi Frank.

Interesting question. It is nice to see that there is such an interest from others too. I wanted to point out two studies of mine that involve the proprioceptive component of haptics, rather than the tactile. But they don't compare it to other senses. I wonder whether they might still be useful for the discussion.

The first is a study that looks at consistency with drift-diffusion prediction to choice responses to forces, finding some discrepancies.

Rank, M. and Di Luca, M., (2015). Speed/Accuracy Tradeoff in Force Perception, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(3):738-46

(the link to the pdf is included)

And since you asked about haptics, an aspect that should be considered is the presence of movement and whether the movement is actively generated or passive. I've started to look a this and have some preliminary results in

Rank, M., and Di Luca, M. (2014). Response Time-Dependent Force Perception During Hand Movement. In Auvray, M., Duriez, C. (eds.) Haptics: Neuroscience, Devices, Modeling, and Applications. 9th International Conference, EuroHaptics 2014, Versailles, France.

(the link doesn't work, but you could find the pdf in my researchgate profile)

I hope this helps

Article Speed/Accuracy Tradeoff in Force Perception

 Thanks Massimiliano. Just downloaded your paper. Looking forward to reading them.

Hi Franck,

Looks like you've spent some time searching for this answer, would you be so kind to share your conclusions and findings either here or pm me? I came across few papers claiming temporal resolution for haptic feedback needed to be at least 1kHz but it seems to be pulled out of the blue, majority of such papers had no reference for it whatsoever and rest was referring to these without it :/

Just to clarify: I don't know, maybe tactile, proprioception and vestibular are much more precise in temporal domain than auditory or visual so I would agree that they are probably harder to trick with discrete signal... but 30Hz is sufficient to trick the latter two and above 100Hz is pretty much indistinguishable, so 1kHz would be... well... a lot! IMHO

Best wishes,

Kris