Perception of Virtual Multi-Sensory Objects: Some Musings on the Enactive Approach

In this paper we explore, by means of three pilot observational studies using virtual objects, how direct perception through action of multi-sensory audio-visual and haptic object properties support the creation of new categories of believable and plausible objects than can be perceived as being different from those that were presented The three experiments are based on variations of "Pebble boxes" and consist in the exploration and the manipulation of multiple moving multi-sensory objects (the Pebbles). Results from observations and informal interviews with participants illustrate how an inferred scene is apparently constructed from experience, as assumed in the cognitive Enactive concept, by means of three complementary strategies: the Emergent Exploratory Procedures, Dynamic Manipulation Adaptation, and Adaptive Experimental Learning. Findings also illustrate the complementarities between the so-called ergotic and semiotic situations with respect to the strategies that were apparently successful in inferring a believable and plausible scene.Several fundamental questions arise which are relevant to the Enactive assumption with respect to the coupling between perceiving and acting, some of which are discussed here.