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Abstract

In two experiments male undergraduate students (ns = 24 and 28) were placed in a sensory deprivation environment to assess operationally defined drive properties of statistically defined information in the tactile sensory modality. In the first experiment it was demonstrated that there is a relationship between rate of responding for tactile information and duration of sensory deprivation, and a positive linear relationship between response rate and the relative information value of tactile stimuli. In the second experiment it was observed that information satiation in the tactile modality reduces drive for visual information. These results were discussed in relation to previous studies of auditory and visual information drives and were taken to support the existence of a generalized drive for information.

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Information-Seeking Behavior in the Tactile Modality

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