Talk:The Cutaneous Rabbit Effect: Phenomenology and saltation

R1:

I read through the review, overall the information is there and complete.

I have some minor comments: Would it be good to include more figures to describe the CRE typical studies, including neural mechanisms?  Also, it is better to add a paragraph for 'Conclusion'.

As i read through, i believe this schorpedia page would be better if with some words' editing work. I cite some examples below: 1 Under headline - 'Discovery of the Cutaneous Rabbit Effect'---'extended' the effect, would it be good to insert 'scope' or relevant word after 'extended'? 2 -Stimulus properties, you listed 'Time',Distance','Intensity', it would be good to add more blanks, or made the three items italic, so that to make the sentences easily read 3- Reporting method: here you mentioned 'Pointing', do you have relevant reference(s), I'll recommend to add. 4- Models of Sensory saltation:--'Therefore further touch studies', normally we say 'tactile studies'. 5- Neural processing of spatiotemporal studies--here the last paragraph, 'interesting' should be 'interestingly' While i check relevant literature, the following two papers might be of your interest, but i leave them to the authors, whether to include relevant points or not:

Asai T, Kanayama N. “Cutaneous Rabbit” Hops Toward a Light: Unimodal and Cross-Modal Causality on the Skin. Frontiers in Psychology. 2012;3:427. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00427. Mounia Ziat ; Roope Raisamo (2017) The cutaneous-rabbit illusion: What if it is not a Rabbit? World Haptic Conference

R2:

Overall, the article was well written and included a very comprehensive review of the cutaneous rabbit illusion. The only comment/suggestion I had regarding the article is:

"In the section STIMULUS PROPERTIES (intensity), perhaps explain in more detail why greater spatial uncertainty should lead to stronger CRE. The mislocalzation in CRE is systematic and not random, i.e. points are attracted to one another. Simply increasing spatial uncertainty should increases variability in localization but why specifically towards another stimulus in the CRE?"

Author responses (revision 1):

To R1: Our comments appear within your review text:

I have some minor comments: Would it be good to include more figures to describe the CRE typical studies, including neural mechanisms?

We have amended the current figure so that it more clearly shows the typical CRE variations used in studies (most studies use distal-to-proximal motion, we colour coded the figure so it is clear which stimulus is associated with each percept, we have shown small but identical biases for the attractee and attractant stimuli in the two reduced versions of the CRE).

We decided not to show other variations (such a Tau or Turnus effect) as it in unclear if the perception of the stimuli (and the neural mechanisms) are different from that of the CRE. We feel that for more information on neural mechanisms the reader should refer to the cited Goldreich (or Wiemer) papers.

Also, it is better to add a paragraph for 'Conclusion'.

We agree, and have added a conclusion, you can view it on the page or here:

“In summary, the Cutaneous Rabbit Effect shows that spatiotemporal tactile perception is subject to substantial position bias. The CRE only occurs under a prescribed set of conditions, requiring weak touch, and only working over a range of spatial and temporal intervals, which are interdependent. The CRE demonstrates that the perceived position of a tactile stimulus is dependent on stimuli presented before or after it and/or at different positions. Although there are many variants of the CRE, only the Bayesian inference model seems to provide a unifying model of the observed position biases. Further work is required to determine where the neural activity that reflects this model takes place, and if the environment statistics of touch conform to low speeds. Future studies might also seek to explain more complex spatiotemporal patterns or to provide a more complete explanation of the spatial biases of the CRE.”

As i read through, i believe this schorpedia page would be better if with some words' editing work. I cite some examples below:

We have made the changes suggested and also made some other small edits to the text.

1 Under headline - 'Discovery of the Cutaneous Rabbit Effect'---'extended' the effect, would it be good to insert 'scope' or relevant word after 'extended'? We have amended this sentence, inserting “the range of the”.

2 -Stimulus properties, you listed 'Time',Distance','Intensity', it would be good to add more blanks, or made the three items italic, so that to make the sentences easily read Updated.

3- Reporting method: here you mentioned 'Pointing', do you have relevant reference(s), I'll recommend to add.

We have cited Trojan (2010), who developed good arguments for the use of the method of pointing for measuring localization.

4- Models of Sensory saltation:--'Therefore further touch studies', normally we say 'tactile studies'.

Updated.

5- Neural processing of spatiotemporal studies--here the last paragraph, 'interesting' should be 'interestingly'

Updated.

While i check relevant literature, the following two papers might be of your interest, but i leave them to you whether to include relevant points or not:

Asai T, Kanayama N. “Cutaneous Rabbit” Hops Toward a Light: Unimodal and Cross-Modal Causality on the Skin. Frontiers in Psychology. 2012;3:427. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00427. Mounia Ziat ; Roope Raisamo (2017) The cutaneous-rabbit illusion: What if it is not a Rabbit? World Haptic Conference

We have brief mention of the Asai (2012) paper. We have omitted the Ziat paper for now (although it is interesting).

To R2:

Thanks for your comment. We have addressed it in the section on models of sensory saltation (as in the stimulus properties section it could not be explained as the bayesian model is not described at that point).

Further evidence for the Bayesian observer model is given by the observation that using a weaker stimulus results in greater saltation (Tong et al., 2016). Ernst and Banks (2002) showed that when integrating information from different sensory inputs that the weighting given to the input is related to the acuity of that input (i.e. inputs with lower variance are given more weighting). In the CRE situation, modelling suggests that a weak input is given less weight and the prior expectation for low speed more weight, resulting in greater saltation (Tong et al., 2016).