Haptics in music: the effects of vibrotactile stimulus in low frequency auditory difference detection tasks

We present an experiment that investigated the effect of vibrotactile stimulation in auditory pitch discrimination tasks. Extra-auditory information was expected to have some influence upon the frequency discrimination of auditory Just Noticeable Difference (JND) detection levels at 160 Hz. To measure this, the potential to correctly identified positive and negative frequency changes for two randomly divided groups was measured and then compared. The first group was given an audio only JND test and the second group was given the same test, but with additional vibrotactile stimulus delivered via a vibrating glove device. The results of the experiment suggest that in musical interactions involving the selection of specific pitches, or the detection of pitch variation, vibrotactile feedback may have some advantageous effect upon a musician's ability to perceive changes when presented in synchrony with auditory stimulus.