Perception of the material properties of wood based on vision, audition, and touch

TLDR

Prior studies on multimodal material perception have focused on pairs of modalities such as vision–touch, vision–audition, audition–touch, and vision–action. The study examined whether affective material classifications of wood are consistent across vision, audition, and touch. Fifty participants evaluated 22 wood types (genuine, processed, fake) across vision, audition, and touch using a 23‑item questionnaire covering perceptual and affective dimensions. Affective evaluations of wood were consistent across vision, audition, and touch, with similar groupings of attributes such as expensiveness, sturdiness, and pleasantness, indicating a supramodal representation and a link between perceptual and affective properties.

Abstract

Most research on the multimodal perception of material properties has investigated the perception of material properties of two modalities such as vision–touch, vision–audition, audition–touch, and vision–action. Here, we investigated whether the same affective classifications of materials can be found in three different modalities of vision, audition, and touch, using wood as the target object. Fifty participants took part in an experiment involving the three modalities of vision, audition, and touch, in isolation. Twenty-two different wood types including genuine, processed, and fake were perceptually evaluated using a questionnaire consisting of twenty-three items (12 perceptual and 11 affective). The results demonstrated that evaluations of the affective properties of wood were similar in all three modalities. The elements of "expensiveness, sturdiness, rareness, interestingness, and sophisticatedness" and "pleasantness, relaxed feelings, and liked–disliked" were separately grouped for all three senses. Our results suggest that the affective material properties of wood are at least partly represented in a supramodal fashion. Our results also suggest an association between perceptual and affective properties, which will be a useful tool not only in science, but also in applied fields.