The role of visual processing in haptic representation - Recognition tasks with novel 3D objects

In perceiving and recognizing everyday objects we use different senses combined together (multisensory process). However, in the past authors concentrated almost completely on vision. However, it is also true that we can touch objects in order to acquire a whole series of information. Moreover, the combination of these two sensory modalities provides complete information about the explored object. So, I first analyzed the available literature on visual and haptic object representation and recognition separately; then, I concentrated on crossmodal visuo-haptic object representation. Finally I exposed and discussed the results obtained with the three experiments I conducted during my Ph.D. studies. These seem to be in line, as already previously proposed by different authors (Newell et al., 2005; Cattaneo et al. 2008; Lacey et al., 2009), with the existence of a supramodal object representation, which is unhooked from the encoding sensory moodality.