Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) aim at replacing or assisting one or several functions of a deficient sensory modality by means of another sensory modality. Since their inception in the 60’s various kinds of devices have been developed, tested, and shown to allow their users to behave to some degree as if they possessed the substituted sensory organ. In the first part of the talk, I’ll review the existing devices together with the main results obtained across the literature. Then I’ll turn to the limits and perspectives in the domain. Indeed, despite the numerous studies and research programs devoted to their development and integration, SSDs have failed to live up to their goal of allowing one to ‘see with the skin’ (White et al., 1970) or to “see with the brain” (Bach-y-Rita et al., 2003). As I’ll stress, these somewhat peremptory claims, as well as the research conducted so far, are based on an implicit perceptual paradigm. Such perceptual assumption accepts the equivalence between using a SSD and perceiving through a particular sensory modality (Deroy & Auvray, 2013). The aim here is to provide an alternative framework, which defines the integration of SSDs as being closer to culturally- implemented cognitive extensions of existing perceptual skills such as reading. According to it, the experience after sensory substitution is a transformation, extension, or augmentation of our capacities, rather than something equivalent or reducible to an already existing sensory modality.
Malika Auvray is a CNRS researcher in cognitive sciences at the Laboratory for Mechanics and Engineering Sciences (LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France). Her main research interests are in sensory substitution and broader cross-modal interactions. She investigates experimentally the learning of sensory substitution devices and the involved mechanisms of distal attribution, challenges the distinction of sensory modalities through the examples of these devices, and collaborates to the development of two visual-to-auditory conversion systems: The Vibe and NAVIG.

Journée du 17 juillet 2013

Human Computer Confluence – Unbreakable Ties in the Symbiosis of Society and Technology Aloïs Ferscha (Johannes Kepler Universität, Austria) Learning to use sensory substitution devices Malika Auvray (LIMSI-CNRS, France)