The Last Handful

Serial dependence in hand-feel judgements of soil moisture

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities asks 36 irrigation trainees for 15,120 touch-only irrigate-or-hold calls on one sandy loam at seven moisture levels. After a wetter handful the threshold for the next call rises by 1.33 steps of the series at a five-second interval, falling to 0.31 at sixty seconds, and a rinse of the hand halves it: a contrast away from the last handful, not the attraction reported for vision.

@misc{slop_krycq2,
  author       = {Ingrid Vasseur and Marek Solheim and Vigdis Emenike},
  title        = {The Last Handful: Serial dependence in hand-feel judgements of soil moisture},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.krycq2},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-serial-dependence-in-krycq2/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}