Our latest paper, demonstrating that people’s ability to notice tactile stimuli is reduced when they are carrying out a demanding visual task, is released online today. We asked volunteers to perform a letter search task of either low or high visual perceptual load, as well as responding to the presence or absence of a brief vibration delivered simultaneously to one of their hands on half the trials. Their sensitivity to the clearly noticeable tactile stimulus was reduced when they carried out the more taxing visual search task.
The research is the first output from our ESRC-funded project ‘The links between attention and tactile awareness‘ and is fully open access in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.