Multimodal Interactions: Tactile-Auditory

When we explore a texture with our hands or just rub our hands, the tactile percept is accompanied by simultaneous sounds. Although not always obvious in everyday life, this auditory feedback conveys useful information about surface properties. This entry describes examples of how auditory feedback influences tactile perception, and some of the proposed mechanisms. Experiments can unmask such an interaction between auditory and tactile perception, for example in what Jousmäki and Hari called the parchment-skin illusion, experimentally demonstrated as follows: subjects rubbed their palms together while the ensuing sound was played back to them in headphones. When the high frequencies of the sound (above 2,000 hertz, Hz) were selectively enhanced, subjects reported that the palmar skin feels dry and parchmentlike, compared with trials when the ...