the meanings of touch: sex differences

tuan nguyen, richard heslin, michele l. nguyen

study to determine a) whether males and females attach similar meanings to a touch applied to equivalent body areas, b) examine how much reliance is placed by the decoder of a tactile message on its modality relative to its bodily location, c) examined whether differences in meaning, could be based on psychophysical and physiological characteristics.

Male and female participants where given a diagram that divided the body into different areas and where asked to tell what a certain touch on a certain body part meant to them.

Male and females interpret different the meanings of touches they receive from an opposite-sex friend.

Types of touch and body locations touched are associated with the same meanings by men and women, but feelings/reactions differ.

Study was conducted prior to jones and Yarbrough. Does not consider the context of the touch, participants were given words to associate so there was less participant involvement in defining the meanings.

communicating emotion through a haptic link: design space and methodology

jocelyn smith, karon maclean

an empirical study and evaluation of a prototype to allow couples to communicate through touch over a distance. They had two prototypes, the ‘handstroke’ metaphor which using a motor to give force feedback to simulate a stroke. A knob rotates and causes the corresponding knob to vibrate. What I found intriguing in their methodology was that they gave a person an emotion, such as “delighted”, and asked them to express this emotion using the haptic device. The participant would turn the knob according to how they thought this emotion would be expressed and felt by the corresponding motor. While their results are okay (54% accuracy between couples) it does show direction and opportunity for allowing people to create their own haptic mappings/meanings.

Thinking back to “design for ambiguity”, I think studying the meaning of touch has to allow for some ambiguity so that people can develop their own meanings/mappings. At the same time, I don’t think Gaver’s approach precludes universal understandings of touch and its meaning. Rather, maybe, a middle-ground? A set of tactic/haptic/synesthestic interactions that can be interpreted and re-interpreted.

tactile semiotics: the meanings of touch explored with low-tech prototypes

Simone Gumtau

This paper introduces the term tactile semiotics: the meanings we ascribe to different types of haptic sensations. What is lacking in HCI is a set of general rules in haptic communication that could inform a system of design parameters.

Haptic Box is designed to investigate where we associate certain emotional values with tactile experiences. A box has 10 different textures and materials inside, and participants are asked to map the feeling to words.

“Rugged/Delicate” is an example of a polarity of semantic words.

PinKom – tactile telematics using the pin-mechanism shape display for couples in long distance relationships….using shape-changing and touch/haptic for communication.

a naturalistic study of the meaning of touch

Stanley E Jones and Elaine Yarbrough

Paper presents the findings of a study into the meaning of touch in the everyday interactions of adults. The authors claim that very little is known about the tactile-meaning system in North America. Previous studies were unable to develop a taxonomy because they a) employed indirect methods of examining patterns of touch rather than observing actual behavior, b) past research focused on demographics, and c) the role of context has been ignored in few studies that examined the meaning of touch and thus concluded that a universal touch meaning does not exist.

Hypothesis is that touches have a variety of rather precise meanings which could be uncovered if the context of each touch, including accompanying verbal statements and other elements of the social situation, are examined. The purpose of the present investigation was to explore the cultural meanings of touch behaviors in everyday interactions. The study combines touch behaviors with contextual factors to produce understandable meanings.

Their results revealed 18 categories of meaning:

Touches of Positive Affect: these are touches that communicate generally unambiguous positive emotions. Different touch meanings are accompanied with a verbal statement that can mean something else.

-support-

touches that serve to nurture, reassure, or promise protection. Typical translations including “consoling”…“it’s okay”…“let me take care of you”.

-appreciation-

-inclusion-

being together and suggests psychological closeness. These touches are sustained, lasting sometimes for several minutes. Inclusion touches are between non-family members. When people do talk during inclusion touches but the subject is seldom about being together. The touch itself is enough to express closeness. At times, people do not talk during inclusion touches (walking arm-in-arm, sit together with legs touching)…the unambiguous nonverbal message of side-by-side closeness appears to carry the burden of communicating inclusion.

Another type of inclusion touch is a spot-touch accompanied with a verbal request to participate in a common activity.

-sexual-

also includes flirtation touches.

-affection-

Very vague touch meanings “I love you” or “I like you”. “I miss you”. “I hope we can keep in touch”. More common are indirect verbalizations showing interest or concern “how are you, honey?.” Or, no verbalizations. There is an absence of another, more specific positive meaning. Affection touches are positive touches which are not instigated by situational demands. They are more unconditional in their positive message.

Playful Touches: serve to lighten an interaction. Touches communicate a double message.

-playful affection- teasing quality, quasi-sexual, are not meant to be taken seriously. Participants translations do not always capture the double-edge meaning. Verbal and nonverbal behaviors can be combined to produce double meaning, although touch is unusual or bizarre (playful).

-playful aggression -

touch is initiated, not mutual.

Control touches: direct the behavior, attitude, or feeling state of the recipient.

-compliance- typical translations “move over”, “hurry up”, “stay here”.

-attention getting-

“look at me”, “listen to this”.

-announcing a response-

“I’m really happy”…appear to implicitly request the recipient to share or reciprocate a feeling in some way.

Ritualistic touches:

-greeting-

-departure-

Hybrid touches: touches that involve two or more of the meanings. Most common are greeting/affection and departure affection.

Task-Related touches

-reference to appearance-

-instrumental ancillary-

-instrumental intrinsic-

-accidental touches-

Touch Sequences: two or more touches are communicatively related to one another within the same interaction.

-repetitive sequences- series of touches in which the same meaning is conveyed with each touch.

-repetitive affection: includes both one-way and reciprocated affection.

-repetitive affection/ritualistic hybrids

-greeting and departure rounds: touch involving more than two people…also permits intimate touch between not-so close people

-repetitive inclusion: physical contact is broken from time to time and then reinitiated by one or both persons: “I’m still with you..”

-repetitive support:

-strategy sequences- involve a progression from one meaning to another.

-affection-to-inclusion: begins with an affection touch and proceed to a more prolonged inclusion touch

-affection-to-compliance: affection touch processed to a compliance touch

-mollifying sequences: an initial touch is rejected and followed by an affectionate touch to clarify that there is no hostility.

-rapo: one person flirts with someone else and then rejects the other’s approach

-equalizing power: involve an exchange of one-up touch messages (compliance or playful aggression)

Study demonstrates that verbal messages are interchangeable with tactile behaviors… participants were asked to translate touches into verbal equivalents.

Classification scheme developed is useful from a communication perspective because it focuses on the potential for clarity or ambiguity inherent in the touch code per se, recognizing that the purposes of the persons who use the code may be restricted, but not determined, by the meaning of the touch employed.

Contextual (verbal and nonverbal behaviors) factors are critical to the meanings of touch. Words justify or mask meaning of touch.

book: eyes of the skin

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The Eyes Have Skin: Architecture & the Senses
Juhani Pallasmaa
Wiley and Sons, 2005

Two extended essays compiled in a book. Very inspirational for my work, author laments the neglect of the tactile sense in the design of architecture and spaces.

Very poetically written and moving.

Key Arguments:
Express the significance of the tactile sense for our experience and understanding of the world, but I also intended to create a conceptual short circuit between the dominant sense of vision and the suppressed sense modality of touch.

+primary of the tactile sense has become increasingly evident. The role of peripheral and unfocused vision in our lived experience of the world as well as in our experience of interiority in the spaced we inhabit, has also evoked my interest. The very essence of the lived experience is molded by hapticity and peripheral unfocused vision. Peripheral vision envelops us in the flesh of the world.

+all senses, include vision, are extensions of the tactile sense; the senses are specializations of skin tissue, and all sensory experiences are modes of touching and thus related to tactility

+ our contact with the world takes place at the boundary line of the self through specialized parts of our enveloping membrane

+touch is the sensory mode that integrates our experience of the world with that of ourselves. even visual perceptions are fused and integrated into the haptic continuum of the self…my body remembers who I am and where I am located in the world. The body is truly the navel of the world, not in the sense of the viewing point of the central perspective, but as the very locus of reference, memory, imagination and integration.

+a remarkable factor in the experience of envelop in spatiality, interiority and hapticity is the deliberate suppression of sharp, focused vision. This issue has hardly entered the theoretical discourse of architecture as architectural theorizing continues to be interested in focused vision, conscious intentionality and perspectival representation.

+one of the reasons why the architectural and urban spaces of our time make us feel like outsiders, in comparison with the forceful emotional engagement of natural and historical settings, is their poverty in the field of peripheral vision. Unconscious peripheral perception transforms retinal gestalt into spatial and bodily experiences. Peripheral vision integrates us with space, while focused vision pushes us out of the space, making us mere spectators.

+ the defensive and unfocused gaze of our time, burdened by sensory overload, may eventually open up new realms of vision and thought, freed of the implicit desire of ht eye for control and power. The loss of focus can liberate the eye from its historical patriarchal domination.

+humans has not always been dominated by vision. A primordial dominance of hearing has only gradually been replaced by that of vision.

+numerous cultures in which our private senses of smell, taste, and touch continue to have collective importance in behavior and communication

+ the flatness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter.

+natural materials express their age and history, their story of origin and history of human use.

+freed of the implicit desire of the eye for control and power, it is precisely the unfocused vision of our time that is again capable of opening up new realms of vision and thought. The loss of focus brought about by the stream of images may emancipate the eye from its patriarchal domination and give rise to a participatory and empathetic gaze.

+the haptic experience seems to be penetrating the ocular regime again through the tacti8le presence of modern visual imagery. We cannot halt the flow of images from a music video; instead we have to appreciate it as an enhanced haptic sensation.

+although new technologies have strengthened the hegemony of vision, they may also help to re-balance the realms of the sense. Walter Ong: telephone, tv has brought us into the age of “secondary orality”….and has striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of communal sense, its concentration on the present moment.

+”We in the Western world are beginning to discover our neglected senses. This growing awareness represents something of an overdue insurgency against the painful deprivation of sensory experience we have suffered in our technologized world” Ashley Montagu

book: art & intiamcy

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Art & Intimacy: How the Arts Began

Ellen Dissanayake
University of Washington Press
2000

Written from evolutionary anthropology perspective on the origins of art and love. The origins of art is in the rhythm and modalities of love between a mother and her child.

Thesis:

It is in the inborn capacity and need for mutuality between mother and her child that four other essential human capacities are enfolded or embedded and gradually emerge. Mother-child relationship is the prototype for love and intimacy. The mother-child mutuality contains and influences the capacities for: belonging to and acceptance by a social group, finding and making meaning, importance of making things with the hands, and making art/rituals. It is human nature to love, to belong, to find meaning in life and to make art to elaborate this meaning.

Naturalistic Aesthetics:

An aesthetic experience addresses the evolutionary psycho-biology explained above. Four criteria can be used to assess aesthetics:

1. accessibility coupled with strikingness: art has to access our evolutionary sensory and cognitive range.
2. tangible relevance: art pertains to things people care about and address universal needs for belonging, meaning, and competence.
3. evocative resonance: deep symbolic importance and meaning.
4. satisfying fullness: a state of sheer satisfaction

i-gesture thoughts

Multi-touch, tactile and communication….how can you communicate with touch/tactile with technology?

What are the semantics of touch/gesture? (Build on tactex work….what can i-gesture add?... motion, position, contact, velocity.)

previous work with tactex measured pressure and analyzed shape: the tactex pad gave pressure data along with image.

Gesture was analyzed using image processing algorithms.

The i-gesture pad doesn’t measure pressure; it measures contact and motion. This data-set is quantitatively and qualitatively different than the tactex pad:

- it cant detect pressure but it can detect the slightest touching, something the tactex can not; you need to apply some force on the surface. So the i-gesture is suitable for more subtle and gentle interactions.

- Gives data on motion and velocity of individual fingers; more low-level than tactex...i-gesture is more suitable for interactions that are gesture and motion based….can also be used to record and measure gestures for research.

- I-gesture gives accurate positioning data along with motion data….meaning you can design synchronous interactions between two or more people….communication?

Touch Semantics:
- previous work based on Laban taxonomy.
- Classification and parameters based on pressure and shape (blobs)
- I-gesture can give motion, position, and velocity…can these parameters either validate OR expand on the touch semantic research?

Touch and Communication:

- Since multi-touch first mainstream application is on a communication device (iphone), what spaces for communication does multi-touch open?

concept:
investigate interactions that occur when two people (remote or co-located) touch each other/touch the same spot.....synchronous touch and gesture research for communication

1) interactive wall: two touch-walls located in two separate locations, once participants touch the same spot......
2) fabric-touch pads
3) i-phone envisionments
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