Two experiments compared impressions of texture information based upon visual perception, visual imagery, tactile perception and tactile imagery conditions. Participants either looked at, touched, imagined looking at or imagined touching the surfaces of several stimuli and made judgments about their textures. Multidimensional Scaling analysis was the primary data analysis tool, and analyses revealed that there was greater visual-tactile imaginal equivalence than visual-tactile perceptual equivalence and that perceptual and imaginal equivalence was greater than second-order isomorphism (i.e., congruence of perceptions and images under each modality condition). Although visual and tactile images were highly congruent, they do appear to be independent for at least some stimuli, suggesting that people can form images based primarily on one modality or the other. Visual and tactile perceptions of the textures were less congruent than were visual and tactile images. However, the visual-touch perceptual equivalence for textures appears to be greater than the visual-touch perceptual equivalence for shape information that has been reported in the literature. This more complete visual-touch perceptual equivalence for texture information converges with findings from different research paradigms which have suggested greater similarity of visual-tactile texture perception than of visual-tactile shape perception. Examinations of the congruence between perception and images under both modality conditions suggested partial but not complete second-order isomorphism. These findings converge with reports of second-order isomorphism for visual perceptions and images of shape and color information and extend those findings to include texture information as well as to include second-order isomorphism of tactile images and perceptions for texture information. Furthermore, it appears that there is slightly better correspondence of tactile perceptions and images than of visual perceptions and images. These findings, then, suggest that tactile images exist, can be distinguished from visual images, and are congruent with tactile perceptions of texture information. Also, it appears that vision and touch are more similar in their processing of texture information than in their processing of shape information.
