In this Mi3 interview, we sit down with Wenhan Sun, a doctoral researcher, whose recent collaborative study with ConTakt Lab (TU Dresden) and the University of the Bundeswehr Munich explores how we learn through our senses — touch, sight, and hearing — and how each affects decision-making. The twist? Touch, often overlooked in tech, might just be the secret to faster responses without sacrificing accuracy. Let’s dive into the fascinating world of sensory science and what it means for our everyday interactions with technology.
Mi3: Wenhan, first things first — your study found that people react fastest when they rely on touch, even faster than sight or hearing. Why do you think that is?
Wenhan: Great question! It’s something we suspected based on how much confidence people seem to have in touch. Think about it — when you’re unsure if a fabric is soft or rough, you don’t just stare at it; you touch it. That immediate certainty you feel? It’s what we call perceptual confidence. In our study, we used reaction time as a stand-in for confidence. The faster people responded, the more confident they seemed in their perception. Touch consistently gave quicker reactions, especially compared to vision.
Mi3: So are we saying touch is more reliable than sight?
Wenhan: Not necessarily more reliable, but it gives us a stronger gut feeling. Interestingly, even though people responded more slowly to visual stimuli, their accuracy was just as good as it was for touch. This suggests that while we might be less confident about visual information, it’s not any less accurate. It’s like touch is more “sure” about what it’s sensing.
Mi3: You mentioned using different devices in your study — computers and mobile phones. Did that affect how people learned through their senses?
Wenhan: Absolutely! People using mobile devices were faster across the board. The direct interaction —tapping or swiping — likely helps. On a computer, you’re dealing with a mouse or trackpad, which adds an extra step. This points to the potential benefits of using interactive touch-based technology.
Mi3: Touch sounds like it’s winning here. Do you think technology needs to focus more on haptics and touch feedback we get on devices?
Wenhan: Definitely! Right now, tech relies heavily on visual and auditory information. Your computers and phones can play very complex videos and sounds. But most devices only use very simple haptics, if any at all. But touch could offer so much more. Imagine if your phone could guide you through vibrations rather than forcing you to look at it. Our study suggests that touch-based feedback could speed up interactions while maintaining accuracy. That’s huge for things like driving, where visual distractions can be dangerous, or even for making smartphones more accessible.
Mi3: Your study also talks about something called the “common currency” hypothesis. Can you explain that in simple terms?
Wenhan: Sure! The “common currency” idea is that your brain has a universal way of dealing with different kinds of sensory input. So whether you’re seeing, hearing, or touching something, your brain can compare these inputs using a unified metric. This decision making process works independently from early information processing. This could explain why, despite differences in reaction times, people had similar learning outcomes across all senses in our study.
Mi3: That’s fascinating! So, what’s next for you?
Wenhan: We want to dive deeper into how these sensory preferences could shape future technologies. Can we design interfaces that adapt to how confident people feel using different senses? And could we make learning faster by tapping into the strengths of touch? There’s so much potential to explore!
Check out the original study.
References:
Sun, W., Ripp, I., Borrmann, A., Moll, M., Fairhurst, M. (2025). Touch-driven advantages in reaction time but not in performance in a cross-sensory comparison of reinforcement learning. Heliyon, e41330, doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e41330
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2050/1 – Project ID 390696704 – Cluster of Excellence “Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop” (CeTI) of Technische Universität Dresden. The authors acknowledge the financial support by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany in the programme of “Souverän. Digital. Vernetzt.”. Joint project 6G-life, project identification number: 16KISK001K. Additionally, it received funding from the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (Bayerisches Forschungsinstitut für Digitale Transformation – BIDT) as part of the CoLEARN project – Project ID KON-21-0000048.