The Dominance of Touch by Vision: Occurs with Familiar Objects

In a study of visual dominance based on Rock and Victor's experiments, observers examined well-known objects while receiving conflicting tactual and visual information. In experiment 1 observers simultaneously felt a circular 20 cent coin and looked at it through a lens which transformed the visual image to an oval with axes in the ratio 1:1·8. In experiment 2 another sample of observers felt well known cubic objects—dice—and looked at them through lens systems which made the visual images: (i) rectangular with sides in the ratio 1:1–3; (2) diamond-shaped with 72° smaller angles; (iii) rectangular with sides in the ratio 1:1·8; and (iv) a parallelogram with side lengths in the ratio 1:1·8 and with 60° smaller angles. Although there was some conflict between the observers' cognitions and their percepts, effectively all reported that the target objects were like or felt like their visual images, demonstrating that the dominance of vision over touch is far stronger than has been recognised.