From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical ...exploration. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch fleshes out our understanding of the past with explorations of lived experiences of embodiment from the Middle Ages to modernity. This intimate and sensuous approach to history makes it possible to foreground the tactile foundations of Western culture--the ways in which feelings shaped society._x000B__x000B_Constance Classen explores a variety of tactile realms including the feel of the medieval city; the tactile appeal of relics; the social histories of pain, pleasure, and affection; the bonds of touch between humans and animals; the strenuous excitement of sports such as wrestling and jousting; and the sensuous attractions of consumer culture. She delves into a range of vital issues, from the uses--and prohibitions--of touch in social interaction to the disciplining of the body by the modern state, from the changing feel of the urban landscape to the technologization of touch in modernity._x000B__x000B_Through poignant descriptions of the healing power of a medieval king's hand or the grueling conditions of a nineteenth-century prison, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject, touches us to the quick.
Social touch experience in different contexts: A review Saarinen, Aino; Harjunen, Ville; Jasinskaja-Lahti, Inga ...
Neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews/Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews,
December 2021, 2021-12-00, 20211201, Volume:
131
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
•Touch may not necessarily arouse pleasant feelings or expected neural responses.•Responses to social touch are strongly modified by an array of situational factors.•Toucher’s appearance, stigmatized ...disease, and minority status play important roles.•Also, familiarity of toucher and touched person’s psychological distress are crucial.•Context modifies both behavioral and brain responses to social touch.
Social touch is increasingly utilized in a variety of psychological interventions, ranging from parent-child interventions to psychotherapeutic treatments. Less attention has been paid, however, to findings that exposure to social touch may not necessarily evoke positive or pleasant responses. Social touch can convey different emotions from love and gratitude to harassment and envy, and persons’ preferences to touch and be touched do not necessarily match with each other. This review of altogether 99 original studies focuses on how contextual factors modify target person’s behavioral and brain responses to social touch. The review shows that experience of social touch is strongly modified by a variety of toucher-related and situational factors: for example, toucher’s facial expressions, physical attractiveness, relationship status, group membership, and touched person’s psychological distress. At the neural level, contextual factors modify processing of social touch from early perceptual processing to reflective cognitive evaluation. Based on the review, we present implications for using social touch in behavioral and neuroscientific research designs.
This book seeks to answer why there has there been a persistent fascination by the sighted, including philosophers, poets and the public, in what the blind 'see'.
This survey provides an overview of work on haptic technology for social touch. Social touch has been studied extensively in psychology and neuroscience. With the development of new technologies, it ...is now possible to engage in social touch at a distance or engage in social touch with artificial social agents. Social touch research has inspired research into technology mediated social touch, and this line of research has found effects similar to actual social touch. The importance of haptic stimulus qualities, multimodal cues, and contextual factors in technology mediated social touch is discussed. This survey is concluded by reflecting on the current state of research into social touch technology, and providing suggestions for future research and applications.
Many modern user interfaces are based on touch, and such sensors are widely used in displays, Internet of Things (IoT) projects, and robotics. From lamps to touchscreens of smartphones, these user ...interfaces can be found in an array of applications. However, traditional touch sensors are bulky, complicated, inflexible, and difficult-to-wear devices made of stiff materials. The touch screen is gaining further importance with the trend of current IoT technology flexibly and comfortably used on the skin or clothing to affect different aspects of human life. This review presents an updated overview of the recent advances in this area. Exciting advances in various aspects of touch sensing are discussed, with particular focus on materials, manufacturing, enhancements, and applications of flexible wearable sensors. This review further elaborates on the theoretical principles of various types of touch sensors, including resistive, piezoelectric, and capacitive sensors. The traditional and novel hybrid materials and manufacturing technologies of flexible sensors are considered. This review highlights the multidisciplinary applications of flexible touch sensors, such as e-textiles, e-skins, e-control, and e-healthcare. Finally, the obstacles and prospects for future research that are critical to the broader development and adoption of the technology are surveyed.
•No systematic preference for affective touch on hairy or glabrous skin was found.•Studies are heterogeneous, suggesting high variance in the results.•Results are not affected by publication bias nor ...by other relevant moderators.•Variables affecting affective touch on hairy and glabrous skin are discussed.
The processing of hedonic aspects of touch, namely affective touch, is associated with the activation of C-Tactile (CT) fibers. CTs were thought to be present only in hairy skin, with glabrous skin being often used as control site in affective touch studies. Nevertheless, several articles comparing pleasantness perception across hairy and glabrous skin reported no significant differences. Surprisingly, CT fibers have also been recently detected on the glabrous palm, further questioning whether affective touch perception across both hairy and glabrous skin is comparable. The present meta-analysis thus aimed to quantify pleasantness perception of affective tactile stimulations on both hairy and glabrous sites. Pooled effect sizes (Hedges’ g) from 18 studies were analyzed using random effect models. No systematic preference towards affective stimulations on hairy or glabrous skin was observed. Moreover, studies were highly heterogeneous, suggesting high variance in the results of the retrieved articles. Results were not affected by publication bias nor by other moderators. Variables affecting affective touch perception on hairy and glabrous skin and methodological considerations were discussed.
•The majority of the studies recruited participants between 18 and 40 years of age.•The remaining age ranges are under-represented or not represented at all.•Affective touch was considered as a ...pleasant experience across the lifetime.•Specific psychophysiological patterns are associated to affective touch perception.
C-Tactile (CT) fibers are activated by slow, caress-like stimulations, and convey a specific tactile processing of hedonic and interpersonal components, defined as affective touch. Given the beneficial effects deriving from affective tactile experiences in social interactions at all ages, a systematic review of experimental studies on affective touch perception across the lifespan was performed with the aims of 1) examining whether and how affective touch has been studied in a systematic manner throughout the lifespan; 2) verifying whether the pleasantness associated to affective stimulations is found during the entire lifespan. Empirical human studies on affective touch were searched in two databases (PubMed, PsychINFO) and 112 articles were retrieved. Results indicated that most of the studies recruited participants with a mean age ranging from 18 to 40 years, whereas other age ranges came out as under-represented or not represented at all. Despite high heterogeneity across studies, affective touch was considered as a pleasant experience across the lifetime, and it was associated to specific psychophysiological patterns in infants and adults.
Quantitative assessment of pleasant touch Essick, Greg K.; McGlone, Francis; Dancer, Chris ...
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews,
02/2010, Volume:
34, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The hedonic attributes of tactile stimulation are important to one's quality of life, yet they have rarely been studied scientifically. The earliest experimental investigations suggested soft and ...smooth materials as pleasant, those that were stiff, rough, or coarse as unpleasant. More recent studies conducted by the authors and described herein obtained ratings of pleasantness of different textured materials stroked across the skin of multiple body sites at controlled velocities and forces of application. Statistically significant interactions between materials, sites, velocities, forces and subject sex attest to the complexity of the percept. Less pleasant percepts arose from stimuli that were rougher. However, the difficulty in making further general statements regarding hedonic touch raises questions as to whether the body surface can be mapped affectively in a meaningful manner with a single stimulus and indeed whether pleasantness-to-touch can be viewed as a unidimensional construct.
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