关键词: 触觉时序知觉, 手臂交叉效应, 参考系, 性别差异

Abstract: Temporal order perception is the successive perception of sensory events, which is influenced by many factors. Studies have shown that when the observers’ hands were crossed over the midline, judgments about the temporal order of two successive tactile stimuli delivered to the left and right hands are less accurate as compared to when the hands were placed in an uncrossed posture. Different theories have been proposed to explain the effect which focus on the reference frame involved in the touch representation, but neither involved organic variable. In view of the spatial specific of the crossed-hands effect, and spatial factor proved to be influential on male and female spatial performance, We were interested in the role of gender in crossed-hands effect. Temporal order judgment (TOJ) task is used to investigate whether sex influence on the crossed-hands effect or not. Twenty-four healthy under graduate students as paid volunteers participated in this experiment. Each subject participated in three experimental blocks: for one block of crossed-hand trials, subjects were instructed to respond based on which hand was stimulated first (somatotopic instructions) and for another block of crossed-hand trials subjects were instructed to respond based on which side of the body was stimulated first, and in the uncrossed-hand condition, subjects were instructed to respond based on which hand was stimulated first. Owing to the response ways usually employed in prior studies are difficult to avoid the confuse influence of spatial relation (compatibility or incompatibility) between stimuli and response on the temporal order judgment; Subjects are required make an oral report in this study. Crossed-hands effect is found in both males and females in tactile TOJ tasks based on somatotopic and spatiotopic frames of reference. This robust and reproducible crossed-hands effect has gender differences when intervals shorter than 150ms, female participants produced larger tactile TOJ crossed-hands deficits compared to male participants, especially when stimuli on the left hand or left side (right hand) came first in tasks that stimuli were identified by different reference frames. According to the previous results that the temporal order judgment reversal when the SOA is shorter than 300ms, while temporal order accuracy in the crossed-hands tactile TOJ task significantly improved when the SOA longer enough. The finding reveals that gender differences disappear under longer SOA condition. Marked gender differences found at moderately short intervals maybe have something to do with the differences of ability to space perception and physiologicanatomy between males and females.

Key words: tactile temporal order perception, crossed-hands effect, reference frame, gender differences