Reciprocal Modelling of Active Perception of 2-D Forms in a Simple Tactile-Vision Substitution System

The strategies of action employed by a human subject in order to perceive simple 2-D forms on the basis of tactile sensory feedback have been modelled by an explicit computer algorithm. The modelling process has been constrained and informed by the capacity of human subjects both to consciously describe their own strategies, and to apply explicit strategies; thus, the strategies effectively employed by the human subject have been influenced by the modelling process itself. On this basis, good qualitative and semi-quantitative agreement has been achieved between the trajectories produced by a human subject, and the traces produced by a computer algorithm. The advantage of this “reciprocal modelling” option, besides facilitating agreement between the algorithm and the empirically observed trajectories, is that the theoretical model provides an explanation, and not just a description, of the active perception of the human subject.