Perceivers vary in their capacity to benefit from feedback in learning to perceive length by dynamic touch

Earlier ecologically motivated studies have revealed substantial individual differences in perceptual learning: Individuals varied in their ability to attune to a specifying variable. A possible source of these individual differences is between-subjects variation in the capacity to benefit from feedback. Although this hypothesis was postulated by Withagen & van Wermeskerken (2009), their experiment could not exclude other factors that might be involved. The aim of the present experiment was to provide a more critical test of their hypothesis. To this end, we trained two groups of participants in length perception by dynamic touch in two different learning environments. In one environment, it was easier for a perceiver to separate the perceptual noise from the error that resulted from the detection of a nonspecifying variable. This separation was more difficult to make in the other learning environment. All of the participants responded to the feedback in the easy environment, but not all of them did in the difficult environment. This indicates that individuals indeed differ in their capacities to benefit from feedback. The implications of these results for recent debates on individual differences are discussed.