Human motor control is based on multisensory integration, with tactile sensation playing a crucial role in movement adjustment. Tactile feedback has been applied in motor rehabilitation and improving task efficiency in VR and understanding how tactile stimulation affects kinesthetic sensation is essential for advancing these technologies. This study investigated how changes in tactile stimulation during active sliding influence speed control. Seven participants performed a sliding task at a target speed (50 mm/s) on a stimulus plate with ridges spaced 7 mm apart. The task consisted of a memory block, where participants learned the target speed with auditory feedback, and a reproduction block, where they reproduced the motion without feedback. Baseline conditions maintained the same plate motion in both blocks, while comparison conditions had different motion between blocks. In the memory block, the plate moved at a common velocity (0 or v mm/s). In the reproduction block, velocities differed between conditions: for example, when the memory block velocity was 0 mm/s, the reproduction block had 0 mm/s for baseline and v mm/s for comparison. These velocity differences created variations in relative velocity between finger and plate, changing tactile stimulation frequency. We hypothesized that sliding speed adjustments would compensate for stimulus frequency changes and analyzed speed differences between conditions using Bayesian estimation. Two levels of v (25 and 50 mm/s) were tested independently. Results showed sliding speed changed to compensate for stimulus changes, with greater effects at v = 50 mm/s (maximum: approximately 13 mm/s) than 25 mm/s. Participants showed speed adjustments ranging from 7 % to 27 % of the change required for fully compensation. In constant-speed sliding tasks, proprioceptive information dominates motor control, resulting in partial tactile-based adjustments. These findings clarify the extent of tactile influence in proprioceptive-dominant motor tasks and contribute to understanding how tactile stimulation affects kinesthetic sensation.
Kawaminami et al. (Thu,) studied this question.