Browsing by Subject "Touch"
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Item An Empirical Study of Tactile Communicator Types(Texas Tech University, 1978-08) Hines, Debbie GwenNot Available.Item Haptic virtual environment(Texas Tech University, 2001-05) Acosta, Eric JavierVirtual Reality is "the illusion of participation in a synthetic environment rather than external observation of such an environment" [12]. The concept of experiencing a virtual world, that the user may otherwise never be able to experience, has drawn an enormous amount of publicity for many years. This multi-sensory experience typically relies on three-dimensional (3D) graphics and sound, but now we are able to incorporate the sense of touch into these virtual worlds. Haptics is a technology that adds the sense of touch to virtual reality and recent advancements in this field have spawned worldwide interest from different fields of study for both commercial and research interests. Given the importance of the sense of touch for humans, it is desirable to combine tactile, visual, and audio cues to develop a more realistic environment. Such cues would be applicable in a variety of applications ranging from entertainment to simulation training. The incorporation of haptic displays in virtual environments bring many new possibilities, but not without introducing a new dimension of problems that have to be overcome. One such problem is the formation of haptic virtual objects. Unfortunately, there are no high-level tools for the creation, visualization, and manipulation of complex haptic virtual environments and the incorporation of haptics into a system usually requires low-level programming efforts by the developers, forcing them to be knowledgeable in 3D graphical and haptics programming. The goal of this research was to provide an underlying infrastructure that could be built to replace the current labor-intensive methods of creating haptic virtual environments by an easier method that is equivalent to creating graphical virtual environments. This research demonstrates the feasibility of this concept by describing a prototype that was implemented as a plug-in for 3D Studio Max, a commercial graphics package. This plug-in transforms a graphical virtual environment into a haptic virtual environment without any additional programming efforts, allowing developers of haptic scenes to model 3D scene objects graphically, or use preexisting models, and make them haptic with the press of a button. This plug-in also provides the user with the ability to dynamically define haptic materials and apply them to objects in the scene. The user can then modify the properties of the materials interactively to change how the objects feel in an attempt to model more realistic materials. These materials can then be saved into a database for reusing when creating haptic virtual environments.Item Interfering and updating cognitive representations used in judgments of absolute time-to-contact in a prediction-motion task(Texas Tech University, 1997-12) Liddell, Gregory WayneParticipants made judgments about time-to-contact (TTC) with a predictionmotion (PM) task while performing Cooper and Shepard's(1973) cued and non-cued mental rotation task. Using a dual task paradigm, participants mentally rotated an alphanumeric character either before or during the time the object disappeared in the PM task. I assumed that mental rotation occurred either before or during the time imagery was used in PM tasks. Although there were no effects of interference on the PM task, response times to mentally rotate the character increased as a function of character orientation (peaking at 180 degrees) in the non-cued mental rotation condition but not in the cued condition. This finding indirectly supports the notion of a bottleneck process whereby participants are able to store the characteristics of the rotated character and postpone mental rotation until completion of the PM task; thus increasing response time to identify the rotated character. Moreover, underestimation errors observed in prior studies of PM tasks were not present at large TTC values (6 s) when either the distance or integrated distance and velocity of the object was updated following the disappearance of the object in a PM task. Results suggest that PM tasks involve imagery processes rather than or in addition to optical TTC information and that observer's may internalize the object's visible motion using a memory representation of the object's motion after it disappears. In summary, the results suggest that imagery processes are involved in judgments of TTC in PM tasks. Further, imagery processes appear to either decay or become inefficient at large values of actual TTC. Distance and integrated distance and velocity cues are potentially useful in updating observer's internal representations in such situations. Therefore, it is important to determine the relative contributions of optical TTC and cognitive operations that underlie TTC judgments in PM tasks. This research has applications to occupations that demand the ability to make spatial judgments involving moving objects. For example, the recent docking collision of the Russian spaceship Progress with the Spektr module of Mir was potentially a result of human error in accurately judging virtual contact. In this manual docking maneuver, the commander must rely on multiple sources of information, some of which may overburden limited processing resources. Automation of certain aspects of the manual docking procedure could serve to reduce cognitive processing load and potentially reduce the probability of human error.Item Motor speed and tactile perception in children and adolescents with nonverbal learning disabilities(2006) Wilkinson, Alison Diane; Semrud-Clikeman, MargaretItem Oral stereognosis and short-term memory(Texas Tech University, 1973-08) Cavaness, Denise Suzanne KasbergNot availableItem The influence of age, sex, family size, and community size on attitude toward tactile communication(Texas Tech University, 1982-05) Berryhill, Natalie BethThe purpose of this research was to find the relationship of age, sex, family size and community size to tactile attitudes. The Hines Tactility Measure (Hines, 1978) and the Tactile Avoidance Measure (Anderson & Leibowitz, 1976) were administered to 525 subjects ranging from 18 to 92 years of age. Subprograms performed on the data collected were: a Stepwise Multiple Regression, a Frequency analysis, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation, and Reliability. Results indicated that approximately 8.7% (p <.01) of the variance was accounted for by the four variables. Other findings were that tactility decreased as age, family size, and community size increased, and that tactility was strongest among females. The internal analysis of each test and the .71 (p <.01) intercorrelation between the tests indicated that both measures were valid and reliable predictors of tactile attitudes. The Reliability subprogram yielded a standardized item alpha of .87 on the Hines, and .82 on the TAM.Item THE USE OF TOUCH WITH OLDER ADULTS IN MUSIC THERAPY SESSIONS(2017-04-18) Hughes, Marcus James; Miller, Karen; Dachinger, Carolyn; Al-Kofahy, LilibethThe purpose of this study was to explore how board-certified music therapists are currently using touch with older adults in clinical music therapy settings, what factors influence the use of touch, and which, if any, trainings are being implemented. Three forms of touch were defined and used in this study including: simple touch, protracted touch, and dynamic touch. Previous research within the music therapy and related fields suggest that touch is an important variable for consideration within a therapeutic context, and that there is potential for benefit by older adult clients. The independent variables analyzed were gender, race/ ethnicity, personality type, region, age, years of experience, philosophical/ theoretical orientation, diagnoses served, settings served, caseload, functions of touch, reasons for restriction of touch, and training received. A survey was created and sent using emails for 973 board-certified music therapists who identified as working with the geriatric population that were purchased from the Certification Board for Music Therapist. Of those individuals, 186 people completed the survey and met the inclusion criteria. Several findings were generated from this study. First, participants indicated using simple touch more frequently than protracted touch. Few participants indicated using dynamic touch on a frequent basis, and no participants indicated being most likely to use dynamic touch compared to simple or protracted touch. Second, the results provide support for the conclusion that diagnosis, setting, functions of touch, restrictions for touch, gender, personality type, region, philosophical orientation, and personal beliefs are all factors that may potentially influence a music therapists use of touch. Finally, the majority of participants who indicated providing massage or more advanced forms of therapeutic touch to clients indicated having received some form of advanced training or supervision from a qualified professional. As a result of this study, it can be concluded that touch is an important factor for consideration by music therapists working with older adults, that touch can have potential for benefit and harm to older adults, and that more training and education is needed in order to better prepare music therapists for appropriate use of touch within a therapeutic context.