An ecological approach to sensory substitution
- Autores: Lorena Lobo
- Directores de la Tesis: David Travieso García (dir. tes.), David M. Jacobs (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2017
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Antoni Gomila Benejam (presid.), Franciso Calvo Garzón (secret.), Manuel González Bedia (voc.), María Dolores Cañamero Matesanz (voc.), María Pilar Aivar Rodríguez (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Psicología por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: Biblos-e Archivo
- Resumen
Touch is the most crucial perceptual system for humans. It is highly related to our possibilities to survive and it is, together with audition, the preferred system to compensate the absenceof vision in everyday life. The possibilities of touch have been studied in the context of sensory substitution; that is, when one perceptual modality, typically vision, is substituted by another one.
The number of haptic devices that are designed to help visuallyimpaired people or professionals working in low-vision conditions has been considerably growing during the last 50 years. However, compared to the number of possible users, just very few of them are either available or daily used. The aim of this dissertation is to assess if ecological psychology offers a better framework than mainstream approaches to deal with essential features in the design and test of new sensory substitution devices. Some examples of these features involve the role of exploration, learning, mental representations, and information.
In order to do so, I present a group of five empirical studies in which four different devices have been used: Three of these devices were related to the TSIGHT and the fourth one was the Enactive Torch. A total of nine experiments were conducted in three research facilities. The experimental tasks included detecting and stepping on obstacles, judging the climbability of an obstacle, orienting and approaching to a target, and steering towards a target avoiding multiple obstacles and selecting routes. A wide variety of experimental conditions that ranged from totally absence of vision and low-vision conditions to full visual training were tested. Research designs included a pretest-posttest design, a within-subject design, and several factorial designs. Blindfolded and blind adults with ages that varied from 18 to 65 years old participated in this research. In all cases, position and orientation of participants during the tasks were recorded using a motion capture system (either Optotrak Certus, Northern Digital Inc., Canada; or Qualisys Inc., Sweden). In addition to performance variables, movement variables like velocity, range of movements, and number and amplitude of oscillations were studied. Also, simulations of a dynamic information-based control model for route selection were performed and compared to results of participants using a haptic device.
Results of the experiments indicated that it was possible to solve all tasks using haptic devices even when they were not placed on an area of maximum sensitivity (for instance, a device was placed on the lower leg). The relevant role of exploration and active perception was confirmed in several studies and its relation to accuracy was also documented.
Furthermore, results revealed that task-specific information is an essential part of sensory substitution. Consequently, it was argued that it could be an explanation of the low-applicability of sensory substitution devices. Finally, evidence in favor of the dynamic information-based control model for route selection against hypothesis involving mental representations were found. My conclusion supports that ecological psychology provides researchers with a better framework to deal with sensory substitution. This approach suggests innovative solutions that could be of great relevancy for visually-impaired people.
