Multisensory Similarity Ratings: Visual and Tactile Object Perception Dataset

This dataset comprises behavioral similarity ratings collected from human participants who evaluated a set of novel 3D objects—referred to as "digital embryos"—through both visual and tactile modalities. The visual assessments were conducted using a virtual reality (VR) environment, allowing participants to explore the objects without tactile input. Conversely, tactile evaluations involved blindfolded participants physically exploring 3D-printed versions of the same objects using both hands. Each participant rated the perceived similarity between pairs of objects, facilitating the construction of perceptual spaces for each sensory modality.

The dataset includes:

Visual Similarity Ratings: Collected from 25 participants using VR-based exploration.

Tactile Similarity Ratings: Collected from 25 blindfolded participants using haptic exploration.

Stimulus Information: Details of the 16 unique 3D objects, including computationally extracted shape features.

In the dataset folder, each object is labeled using the format GXY, where:

X denotes the category number (e.g., 1 or 2)

Y denotes the exemplar number within that category

For example:

G13 refers to Category 1, Exemplar 3

G25 refers to Category 2, Exemplar 5

This naming convention helps organize and identify the objects based on their structural grouping in the experiment.

For more information, please refer to the following study: Tabrik S., Behroozi M., Schlaffke L., Heba S., Lenz M., Lissek S., Güntürkün O., and Tegenthoff M. (2021) Visual and tactile modalities share common features in object recognition. eNeuro, 8(5):ENEURO.0101-21.