Abstract
Active Perception perspectives claim that action is closely related to perception. An empirical approach that supports these theories is the minimalist, in which participants perform a task using an interface that provides minimal information. Their exploratory movements are crucial to generating a meaningful sequence of information. Previous studies analyzed sensorimotor trajectories describing qualitative strategies and linear quantification of participants’ movement performance, but that approach struggles to capture the behavior of non-stationary data. In the present study, we applied the recurrence plot (RP) and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) to study the structure of sensorimotor trajectories developed by participants trying to discriminate between two invisible geometric shapes (Triangle or Rectangle). The exploratory movements were made using a computer mouse and sonification-mediated feedback was provided, which depended exclusively on whether the pointer was inside or outside the shape. We applied RP and RQA to the sensorimotor trajectories, with the aim of studying their fine structure characteristics, focusing on their repetitive patterns. Recurrence analysis proved to be useful for quantifying differences in dynamic behavior that emerge when participants explore invisible virtual geometric shapes. The differences obtained in RQA-based measures associated with the vertical structures allowed to postulate the existence of particular exploration strategies for each figure. It was also possible to determine that the complexity of the dynamics changed according to the shape. We discuss these results in light of antecedents in haptic and visual perceptual exploration.
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The dataset generated and analyzed during the current study is openly available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5525112.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Gustavo Belbruno for his technical contribution to the setup of the experiment. In addition, we are much indebted to Moreno I. Coco and the two reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Funding
The work was partially supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción de la Investigación, el Desarrollo Tecnológico y la Innovación, FONCYT, Argentina (Grant numbers PICT 2018–2260 and PICT 2018–4593); the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Argentina (Grant number PID 5373); and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina (Grant number PID 472/2018).
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Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Fernando Bermejo, and Mercedes X. Hüg contributed equally to the elaboration of this manuscript. Conceptualization: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Fernando Bermejo, Mercedes X. Hüg; Methodology: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Fernando Bermejo, Mercedes X. Hüg; Resources: M. Virginia Barrios; Investigation: Fernando Bermejo, M. Virginia Barrios; Data curation: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin; Formal analysis: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Mercedes X. Hüg; Software: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Augusto Pampaluna; Visualization: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Augusto Pampaluna; Writing—original draft preparation: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Fernando Bermejo, Mercedes X. Hüg; Funding acquisition: Fabián C. Tommasini, Diego A. Evin, Fernando Bermejo, Mercedes X. Hüg.
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Tommasini, F.C., Evin, D.A., Bermejo, F. et al. Recurrence analysis of sensorimotor trajectories in a minimalist perceptual task using sonification. Cogn Process 23, 285–298 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01068-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01068-9