Effect of Gloves on Sense and Hand Movement Function

Abstract

When we wear gloves, they are a part of hands in movements, and must be an object of evaluation. Evaluation of gloves needs a new point of view, from “active touch and passive touch”, especialy in cold regions where gloves are used daily, and at the same time they must move easily with hands in winter. Gibson noted that active touch is an exploratory rather than a merely receptive sense. The vital of this paper is that there should be some differences between vision and touch in evaluation of gloves if objectivity is strengthened by vision. Two tests for the evaluation of gloves were conducted under two conditions, touch and touch-and-vision conditions. The combination of some of hand, glove, object and movement was the key element in both tests. From the sensory test, the difference between the factors that affect the total sense of glove was derived between conditions. Secondly, the test was carried out as to the hand working functions. The functions were compared between the lap time in the seven processes of works by hand with glove to the one by bare hands. The outcome of two tests showed that senses through touch and/or vision, forming total evaluation independently, influenced our hand movements in the daily life. We could evaluate the gloves more objectively with touch and vision than with only touch, when we worked on objects like a brief case or a glass. Touch made subjects sensitive to evaluate the inherent property of gloves like weight and compressional energy. Since it is possible to judge the mechanical properties of gloves being helped by visual memory, the lap time to achieve the movements were quite different between results in both condition tests.