A Study on Psychophysics of Weight Holding in Hand

Abstract

This paper describes a research study conducted to investigate the human perception of a weight held in hand. Twenty male subjects participated in the study. Subject was blindfolded and was asked to guess the weight of a bag placed over his upper extremity by the experimentor. The objectives were twofold; firstly, to determine the ability of the subject to correctly guess the weight and secondly, to determine whether the location of placement of weight along the forearm influences this ability. The results suggest a linear relationship between the actual weight and guessed weight in the range studied. Also the locations along the forearm did not result in any significant difference.