Multi-touch devices are widely used in our daily lives and the field of education. Users touch the digital objects depicted on these devices directly with their hands and fingers. Prior research indicated that information processing is influenced by the proximity of the hand(s) to the displayed information: particularly visuospatial processing is fostered near the hands. Two experiments investigated this effect of hand proximity for learning about visuospatial information on multi-touch devices. Participants either touched digital objects (pictures of paintings with text labels) on a multi-touch table directly (near hand) or manipulated the objects indirectly by touching placeholders of the objects (far hand; hand proximity). In Experiment 2, additionally, the interaction time with the displayed learning materials (time of contact between hands and objects/placeholders) was analyzed as continuous factor (duration of touch). In both experiments, learning outcomes were measured by recognition performance on the visuospatial and verbal aspects of the presented materials. Results of Experiment 1 showed – as expected – that visuospatial learning was fostered near the hands. Experiment 2 replicated this effect for visuospatial learning, when touch durations were sufficiently long. Hand proximity had no influence on verbal learning in both experiments. The results and implications for designing interactive multi-touch interfaces are discussed.

多点触控设备广泛应用于我们的日常生活和教育领域。用户用他们的手和手指直接触摸这些设备上描绘的数字对象。先前的研究表明，信息处理受手与所显示信息的接近程度的影响：尤其是在手附近进行视觉空间处理。两个实验研究了手靠近的这种影响，以了解多点触摸设备上的视觉空间信息。参与者要么直接（靠近手）在多点触摸桌上触摸数字对象（带有文本标签的绘画图片），要么通过触摸对象的占位符（远手；手接近）间接地操作对象。）。另外，在实验2中，与显示的学习资料的交互时间（手与物体/占位符之间的接触时间）被分析为连续因素（触摸持续时间）。在两个实验中，学习成果都是通过对所介绍材料的视觉空间和言语方面的识别表现来衡量的。如预期的那样，实验1的结果表明，视觉空间学习是在手附近进行的。当触摸持续时间足够长时，实验2将这种效果复制到视觉空间学习中。在两个实验中，手的接近都不会影响言语学习。讨论了设计交互式多点触摸界面的结果和含义。