Spatial locations of somatosensory stimuli are coded according to somatotopic (anatomical distribution of the sensory receptors on the skin surface) and spatiotopic (position of the body parts in external space) reference frames. This was mostly evidenced by means of temporal order judgment (TOJ) tasks in which participants discriminate the temporal order of two tactile stimuli, one applied on each hand. Because crossing the hands generates a conflict between anatomical and spatial responses, TOJ performance is decreased in such posture, except for congenitally blind people, suggesting a role of visual experience in somatosensory perception. In previous TOJ studies, stimuli were generally presented using the method of constant stimuli—that is, the repetition of a predefined sample of stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOA) separating the two stimuli. This method has the disadvantage that a large number of trials is needed to obtain reliable data when aiming at dissociating performances of groups characterized by different cognitive abilities. Indeed, each SOA among a large variety of different SOAs should be presented the same number of times irrespective of the participant’s performance. This study aimed to replicate previous tactile TOJ data in sighted and blind participants with the adaptive psi method in order to validate a novel method that adapts the presented SOA according to the participant’s performance. This allows to precisely estimate the temporal sensitivity of each participant while the presented stimuli are adapted to the participant’s individual discrimination threshold. We successfully replicated previous findings in both sighted and blind participants, corroborating previous data using a more suitable psychophysical tool.

根据体位（皮肤表面上的感觉受体的解剖分布）和空间位（外部空间中身体部位的位置）参考框架对体感刺激的空间位置进行编码。这主要是通过时间顺序判断（TOJ）任务证明的，在该任务中，参与者区分两种触觉刺激的时间顺序，每只手施加一个。由于双手交叉会在解剖反应和空间反应之间产生冲突，因此，除了先天失明的人以外，TOJ性能会以这种姿势降低，这暗示了视觉体验在体感感知中的作用。在以前的TOJ研究中，通常使用恒定刺激的方法来表示刺激，即重复分离两个刺激的预定的刺激发作异步（SOA）样本。这种方法的缺点是，在以具有不同认知能力为特征的群体的表现分离时，需要进行大量试验才能获得可靠的数据。实际上，无论参与者的表现如何，各种各样的不同SOA中的每个SOA都应显示相同的次数。这项研究旨在利用自适应技术在有视力和盲人中复制以前的触觉TOJ数据psi方法是为了验证一种新颖的方法，该方法可以根据参与者的表现来适应提出的SOA。这允许精确地估计每个参与者的时间敏感性，同时将所呈现的刺激适应于参与者的个体辨别阈值。我们成功地在有视力和盲人的参与者中复制了先前的发现，并使用更合适的心理物理学工具证实了先前的数据。