Onomatopace: A Device for Facilitating Acquisition of Keen Kansei to Tactile Perception

Abstract

Keen "kansei" is one of the abilities that professional people in various domains possess. Only few researches, however, have examined how to acquire it. Meta-cognitive verbalization of what one's body feels and does is said to be one method for that. This paper, selecting tactile perception of the sole of the foot in walking as the domain for examination, explores the feasibility of the following method. A user wears a device to measure the vibration of a shoe for each step, pays keen attention to tactile perception of the sole in walking on various surfaces, and verbalizes it by onomatopoeia of his or her own creation. Then the device stores the vibration signals for each step by linking them with the onomatopoeia the user has employed to verbalize the corresponding tactile perception. The degree in which vibration signals for different onomatopoeia are distinguished from one another is expected to be an indicator of whether or not the user's kansei about tactile perception of the sole is keen. Have the participants become keen to tactile perception of the sole? The results are shown and discussed.