Tactile Perception

Tactile perception is the process of perceiving and interpreting information through the sense of touch, encompassing both cutaneous perception (sensing through the skin in a stationary process, detecting texture, pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain) and haptic perception (active exploration involving movement of muscles and the shoulder-arm-hand system to sense shape, size, and weight). For blind and visually impaired individuals, tactile perception is a primary means of accessing spatial and physical information about objects and environments. Research has shown that blind people use different tactile strategies than sighted individuals, preferring two hands and multiple fingers, and often completing tactile perception tasks with higher accuracy and faster speed than sighted counterparts.