Effects of Visual Locomotion and Tactile Stimuli Duration on the Emotional Dimensions of the Cutaneous Rabbit Illusion

In this study, we assessed the emotional dimensions (valence, arousal, and dominance) of the multimodal visual-cutaneous rabbit effect. Simultaneously to the tactile bursts on the forearm, visual silhouettes of saltatorial animals (rabbit, kangaroo, spider, grasshopper, frog, and flea) were projected on the left arm. Additionally, there were two locomotion conditions: taking-off and landing. The results showed that the valence dimension (happy-unhappy) was only affected by the visual stimuli with no effect of the tactile conditions nor the locomotion phases. Arousal (excited-calm) showed a significant difference for the three tactile conditions with an interaction effect with the locomotion condition. Arousal scores were higher when the taking-off condition was associated with the intermediate duration (24 ms) and when the landing condition was associated with either the shortest duration (12 ms) or the longest duration (48 ms). There was no effect for the dominance dimension. Similar to our previous results, the valence dimension seems to be highly affected by visual information reducing any effect of tactile information, while touch can modulate the arousal dimension. This can be beneficial for designing multimodal interfaces for virtual or augmented reality.