Influence of Background Noise on the Temporal Perception of Vibrotactile Stimuli

Changes in perception induced by external factors provide insights into underlying perceptual mechanisms and potential applications. This study investigates the mechanisms of temporal perception for vibrotactile stimuli, specifically focusing on the minimum inter-stimulus interval (ISI) required to perceive two square wave pulses as discrete events. Psychophysical experiments were conducted under four background noise levels and three pulse durations that evoke different intensity
perception. Subsequently, skin-propagating vibrations were measured using an accelerometer to dissociate physical mechanical interference
from higher-level neural processing. The results revealed that the perceptual threshold for ISI significantly increases as the background noise intensity rises, and statistical analysis showed a significant main effect of noise level, but not of pulse duration. These findings suggest that vibrotactile events are perceived as temporal “chunks” and we hypothesized that we use information governed by an energy integration process rather than instantaneous events for vibrotactile perception.