AUTHOR=Pomper Ulrich 

TITLE=No evidence for tactile entrainment of attention

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1168428

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1168428

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Temporal patterns in our environment provide a rich source of information, to which endogenous neural processes linked to perception and attention can synchronize. This phenomenon, known as entrainment, has so far been studied predominately in the visual and auditory domains. It is currently unknown whether sensory phase-entrainment generalizes to the tactile modality, e.g. for the perception of surface patterns or when reading braille. 
Here, we address this open question via a behavioural experiment with preregistered experimental and analysis protocols. 20 healthy participants were presented, on each trial, with 2s of either rhythmic or arrhythmic 10 Hz tactile stimuli. Their task was to detect a subsequent tactile target either in-phase or out-of-phase with the rhythmic entrainment. 
Contrary to our hypothesis, we observed no evidence for sensory entrainment in response times, sensitivity or response bias. In line with several other recently reported null findings, our data suggest that behaviourally relevant sensory phase-entrainment might require very specific stimulus parameters, and may not generalize to the tactile domain.