Grupo DIANA

This paper describes an experimental study about how auditory stimuli interfere with haptic perception. Specifically, the interference of auditory stimulus duration with haptic perception of surface stiffness within a virtual environment is analysed. An experiment was performed in which subjects were asked to tap two virtual surfaces and to report which was stiffer. Our results show that there is an association between short auditory and stiff haptic stimuli, and between long auditory and soft haptic stimuli. Moreover, the influence of auditory information was stronger in the case of discriminating similar haptic stimuli when either facilitating or hindering this haptic discrimination.