Human strategies in exploring objects by touch

The goal of this study is to investigate the strategy of actively exploring an object by touch; in particular it examined the contour following which provides information about the global shape of an object. Two experiments have been carried out in which two classes of subjects were requested to discriminate between pairs of different objects, using only their forefinger tip. By these experiments, five tactile primitives were identified, which seem to drive the control of the exploratory strategy on a low relief picture.