Reconsideration of Ouija board motion in terms of haptic illusions (III) — Experiment with 1-DoF linear rail device

摘要

The Ouija board is a game associated with a type of involuntary motion called ideomotor action. We sought to clarify the conditions under which Ouija board motion occurs, by comparing visual and vibrotactile cues. We hypothesized that the ideomotor action of the Ouija board is caused by two factors: 1) visual and haptic movement cues, which lead to user movement, and 2) interactions between multiple players, which enable each user to feel that she/he is not responsible for the movement. In this paper, we describe our 1-degree of freedom linear rail device, and detail two experiments conducted to test our hypotheses. In the first experiment, we investigated whether vision and tactile motion cues would cause ideomotor action when presented to a single individual. We found that simultaneous presentation of visual motion and tactile illusory forces is important for the occurrence of ideomotor action. In the second experiment, we investigated whether the ideomotor action was larger when there were two players. We found that the amount of displacement was reduced compared with the first experiment. Thus, we could not confirm the effect of multiple users on ideomotor action in the Ouija board game.