Dataset Information

A Compensatory Effect on Mate Selection? Importance of Auditory, Olfactory, and Tactile Cues in Partner Choice among Blind and Sighted Individuals.

ABSTRACT: Human attractiveness is a potent social variable, and people assess their potential partners based on input from a range of sensory modalities. Among all sensory cues, visual signals are typically considered to be the most important and most salient source of information. However, it remains unclear how people without sight assess others. In the current study, we explored the relative importance of sensory modalities other than vision (smell, touch, and audition) in the assessment of same- and opposite-sex strangers. We specifically focused on possible sensory compensation in mate selection, defined as enhanced importance of modalities other than vision among blind individuals in their choice of potential partners. Data were obtained from a total of 119 participants, of whom 78 were blind people aged between 16 and 65 years (M = 42.4, SD = 12.6; 38 females) and a control sample of 41 sighted people aged between 20 and 64. As hypothesized, we observed a compensatory effect of blindness on auditory perception. Our data indicate that visual impairment increases the importance of audition in different types of social assessments for both sexes and in mate choice for blind men.

SUBMITTER: Sorokowska A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5834579 | biostudies-other | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Publications

A Compensatory Effect on Mate Selection? Importance of Auditory, Olfactory, and Tactile Cues in Partner Choice among Blind and Sighted Individuals.

Sorokowska Agnieszka A Oleszkiewicz Anna A Sorokowski Piotr P

Archives of sexual behavior 20180202 3

Human attractiveness is a potent social variable, and people assess their potential partners based on input from a range of sensory modalities. Among all sensory cues, visual signals are typically considered to be the most important and most salient source of information. However, it remains unclear how people without sight assess others. In the current study, we explored the relative importance of sensory modalities other than vision (smell, touch, and audition) in the assessment of same- and o ...[more]

PMID: 29396613

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Project description:We have recently shown that vision is important to improve spatial auditory cognition. In this study, we investigate whether touch is as effective as vision to create a cognitive map of a soundscape. In particular, we tested whether the creation of a mental representation of a room, obtained through tactile exploration of a 3D model, can influence the perception of a complex auditory task in sighted people. We tested two groups of blindfolded sighted people - one experimental and one control group - in an auditory space bisection task. In the first group, the bisection task was performed three times: specifically, the participants explored with their hands the 3D tactile model of the room and were led along the perimeter of the room between the first and the second execution of the space bisection. Then, they were allowed to remove the blindfold for a few minutes and look at the room between the second and third execution of the space bisection. Instead, the control group repeated for two consecutive times the space bisection task without performing any environmental exploration in between. Considering the first execution as a baseline, we found an improvement in the precision after the tactile exploration of the 3D model. Interestingly, no additional gain was obtained when room observation followed the tactile exploration, suggesting that no additional gain was obtained by vision cues after spatial tactile cues were internalized. No improvement was found between the first and the second execution of the space bisection without environmental exploration in the control group, suggesting that the improvement was not due to task learning. Our results show that tactile information modulates the precision of an ongoing space auditory task as well as visual information. This suggests that cognitive maps elicited by touch may participate in cross-modal calibration and supra-modal representations of space that increase implicit knowledge about sound propagation.

Project description:Task demands modulate tactile localization in sighted humans, presumably through weight adjustments in the spatial integration of anatomical, skin-based, and external, posture-based information. In contrast, previous studies have suggested that congenitally blind humans, by default, refrain from automatic spatial integration and localize touch using only skin-based information. Here, sighted and congenitally blind participants localized tactile targets on the palm or back of one hand, while ignoring simultaneous tactile distractors at congruent or incongruent locations on the other hand. We probed the interplay of anatomical and external location codes for spatial congruency effects by varying hand posture: the palms either both faced down, or one faced down and one up. In the latter posture, externally congruent target and distractor locations were anatomically incongruent and vice versa. Target locations had to be reported either anatomically ("palm" or "back" of the hand), or externally ("up" or "down" in space). Under anatomical instructions, performance was more accurate for anatomically congruent than incongruent target-distractor pairs. In contrast, under external instructions, performance was more accurate for externally congruent than incongruent pairs. These modulations were evident in sighted and blind individuals. Notably, distractor effects were overall far smaller in blind than in sighted participants, despite comparable target-distractor identification performance. Thus, the absence of developmental vision seems to be associated with an increased ability to focus tactile attention towards a non-spatially defined target. Nevertheless, that blind individuals exhibited effects of hand posture and task instructions in their congruency effects suggests that, like the sighted, they automatically integrate anatomical and external information during tactile localization. Moreover, spatial integration in tactile processing is, thus, flexibly adapted by top-down information-here, task instruction-even in the absence of developmental vision.

Dataset Information

A Compensatory Effect on Mate Selection? Importance of Auditory, Olfactory, and Tactile Cues in Partner Choice among Blind and Sighted Individuals.

Publications

A Compensatory Effect on Mate Selection? Importance of Auditory, Olfactory, and Tactile Cues in Partner Choice among Blind and Sighted Individuals.

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