Haptics of the heart: The sense of touch in American religion and culture

This essay undertakes a tactile exploration of the sense of touch in contemporary American culture and religion. After briefly recalling the denigration of tactility in Western thought, I consider the usefulness of the work of two theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Walter Benjamin, in recovering the sense of touch—the intimate caress, the violent shock—as deep background for tracking basic modes of religious tactility. By paying attention to sensory media and metaphors, I hope to suggest some features of religious tactility that are not necessarily seen or heard but nevertheless pervade contemporary religion and culture. Schematically, I proceed from cutaneous binding and burning, through kinaesthetic moving, to haptic handling in order to enter this field of tactile meaning and power. Along the way, I touch on specific cases of religious tactility—sometimes caressing, more often striking—that include US President Bill Clinton, firewalking, flag burning, alien abduction, global capitalism, and cellular microbiology. Although this exploratory essay replicates a tactile experience by renouncing visual mapping and verbal argumentation, it points to the presence of a tactile politics of perception that operates at the intersections between human subjectivity and the social collectivity.     

the moderating effect of sense of coherence on work adjustment

The authors examined the relationship between sense of coherence and D. B. Hershenson's (1981) model of work adjustment, specifically, the individual domains of work personality and work competencies. A sample of college students completed the Sense of Coherence Scale (A. Antonovsky, 1987) and the Work Personality Profile Self‐Report (WPP‐SR). A multivariate analysis indicated a medium relationship between sense of coherence and the WPP‐SR, with sense of coherence accounting for 18% of the variance. Univariate tests also indicated a medium relationship between sense of coherence and 4 of the 5 factor scales on the WPP‐SR.     

Cognitive load and the imagination effect

When presented with a procedure or concept to learn, imagining the procedure or concept may be an effective instructional technique compared to conventional studying, thus generating an imagination effect. However, it was hypothesized that the importance of learning through imagining as an instructional technique depends on modes of presentation. Experiment 1 tested adults studying or imagining contour maps as participants and was designed to verify the generality of the imagination effect. Imagination instructions were superior to study instructions on subsequent test questions. Experiment 2 further investigated the effect by comparing much younger students (Grade 4), studying or imagining temperature/time graphs presented in either a split‐attention (spatially separated diagram and text) or an integrated (spatially combined diagram and text) format. Results on a subsequent test indicated that the Grade 4 students found imagining beneficial to their learning, compared with studying the material but the effect was only obtained using an integrated rather than a split‐attention format. Experiment 3 was conducted to obtain verbal protocols from Grade 4 imagination and study groups using the same instructional materials to throw light on the cognitive mechanisms behind the imagination effect. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of loading on position sense in the tongue

The position sense of the tongue and aftereffects on the position sense subsequent to loading were directly investigated. Nine subjects judged the straightahead with the tongue before and after straining laterally with the tongue against the horizontal force induced by a 29.5-g weight. Two of these subjects also participated in the experiment after the surface of the tongue had been anesthetized. Prior loading of the tongue biased the subjects' subsequent judgment of the straight-ahead; following loading, the tongue was placed farther in the direction of the previous effort. The results are discussed with reference to postcontraction effects from experiments on loading the limb and eye.     

Stroke me for longer this touch feels too short: The effect of pleasant touch on temporal perception

Negative, painful, somatosensory stimulation lengthens the perceived duration of time. However, to date, no research has explored the influence of positive, pleasant, somatosensory stimulation on temporal perception. Here we asked whether gentle stroking touch influences perceptions of duration. Pleasant (gentle) and mildly unpleasant (rough) tactile stimulation was delivered whilst participants estimated the duration of a neutral visual stimulus. Pleasant touch resulted in shorter estimates of duration than unpleasant touch. There was no difference in duration perception in the unpleasant and control conditions. Taken together with the results of previous research (Ogden, Moore, Redfern, & McGlone, 2015), the results of this study suggest that pleasant and painful somatosensory stimulation have opposing effects on temporal perception, and additionally that pleasant touch can alter aspects of perceptual and attentional processing outside the purely affective domain.     

The effect of visual threat on spatial attention to touch

Viewing a threatening stimulus can bias visual attention toward that location. Such effects have typically been investigated only in the visual modality, despite the fact that many threatening stimuli are most dangerous when close to or in contact with the body. Recent multisensory research indicates that a neutral visual stimulus, such as a light flash, can lead to a tactile attention shift towards a nearby body part. Here, we investigated whether the threat value of a visual stimulus modulates its effect on attention to touch. Participants made speeded discrimination responses about tactile stimuli presented to one or other hand, preceded by a picture cue (snake, spider, flower or mushroom) presented close to the same or the opposite hand. Pictures of snakes led to a significantly greater tactile attentional facilitation effect than did non-threatening pictures of flowers and mushrooms. Furthermore, there was a correlation between self-reported fear of snakes and spiders and the magnitude of early facilitation following cues of that type. These findings demonstrate that the attentional bias towards threat extends to the tactile modality and indicate that perceived threat value can modulate the cross-modal effect that a visual cue has on attention to touch.     

The effect of touch on a visually ambiguous three-dimensional figure

The effect of haptic (i.e. tactile-kinaesthetic) information on the perception of an ambiguous visual figure was investigated. The figure used was a self-luminous, threedimensional wire cube viewed in darkness. It was found that visual reversals still took place when the cube was explored with the hands, but the reversal rate was reduced and the time increased during which the cube looked as it “really” was.     

The effect of friendly touch on delay-of-gratification in preschool children

Physical touch has many documented benefits, but past research has paid little attention to the effects of touch on children's development. Here, we tested the effect of touch on children's compliance behaviour in a modified delay-of-gratification task. Forty children (M?=?59 months) were randomly assigned to a touch or no touch group. Children in the intervention condition received a friendly touch on the back while being told that they should wait for permission to eat a candy. Results showed that children in the touch condition waited an average of two minutes longer to eat the candy than children in the no touch condition. This finding has implications for the potential of using touch to promote positive behaviours in children.     

The effect of relationship status on communicating emotions through touch

Research into emotional communication to date has largely focused on facial and vocal expressions. In contrast, recent studies by Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006) and Hertenstein, Holmes, McCullough, and Keltner (2009) exploring nonverbal communication of emotion discovered that people could identify anger, disgust, fear, gratitude, happiness, love, sadness and sympathy from the experience of being touched on either the arm or body by a stranger, without seeing the touch. The study showed that strangers were unable to communicate the self-focused emotions embarrassment, envy and pride, or the universal emotion surprise. Literature relating to touch indicates that the interpretation of a tactile experience is significantly influenced by the relationship between the touchers (Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006). The present study compared the ability of romantic couples and strangers to communicate emotions solely via touch. Results showed that both strangers and romantic couples were able to communicate universal and prosocial emotions, whereas only romantic couples were able to communicate the self-focused emotions envy and pride.     

Investigating the nature and time-course of the modality shift effect between vision and touch

It is well known that stimuli grab attention to their location, but do they also grab attention to their sensory modality? The modality shift effect (MSE), the observation that responding to a stimulus leads to reaction time benefits for subsequent stimuli in the same modality, suggests that this may be the case. If noninformative cue stimuli, which do not require a response, also lead to benefits for their modality, this would suggest that the effect is automatic. We investigated the time-course of the visuotactile MSE and the difference between the effects of cues and targets. In Experiment 1, when visual and tactile tasks and stimulus locations were matched, uninformative cues did not lead to reaction time benefits for targets in the same modality. However, the modality of the previous target led to a significant MSE. Only stimuli that require a response, therefore, appear to lead to reaction time benefits for their modality. In Experiment 2, increasing attention to the cue stimuli attenuated the effect of the previous target, but the cues still did not lead to a MSE. In Experiment 3, a MSE was demonstrated between successive targets, and this effect decreased with increasing intertrial intervals. Overall, these studies demonstrate how cue- and target-induced effects interact and suggest that modalities do not automatically capture attention as locations do; rather, the MSE is more similar to other task repetition effects.     

Cognitive style and the Perky effect.

Depending on inner versus outer frames of reference in Witkin's sense parallels a subject's tendency to distinguish between internal images and external percepts. A rank-order correlation of .69 (N = 22) was found between scores on a task designed to test the latter tendency and scores on the rod-and-frame task.     

Investigating the nature and time-course of the modality shift effect between vision and touch

It is well known that stimuli grab attention to their location, but do they also grab attention to their sensory modality? The modality shift effect (MSE), the observation that responding to a stimulus leads to reaction time benefits for subsequent stimuli in the same modality, suggests that this may be the case. If noninformative cue stimuli, which do not require a response, also lead to benefits for their modality, this would suggest that the effect is automatic. We investigated the time-course of the visuotactile MSE and the difference between the effects of cues and targets. In Experiment 1, when visual and tactile tasks and stimulus locations were matched, uninformative cues did not lead to reaction time benefits for targets in the same modality. However, the modality of the previous target led to a significant MSE. Only stimuli that require a response, therefore, appear to lead to reaction time benefits for their modality. In Experiment 2, increasing attention to the cue stimuli attenuated the effect of the previous target, but the cues still did not lead to a MSE. In Experiment 3, a MSE was demonstrated between successive targets, and this effect decreased with increasing intertrial intervals. Overall, these studies demonstrate how cue- and target-induced effects interact and suggest that modalities do not automatically capture attention as locations do; rather, the MSE is more similar to other task repetition effects.     

The effect of waitresses' touch on alcohol consumption in dyads.

A total of 96 men and 48 women participated in a study on the effect of touch in the natural setting of public taverns in the United States. Participants in the same-gender (men-men) or mixed-gender dyads were either touched or not touched by waitress confederates. Regardless of dyad type, participants who were touched consumed more alcohol than participants who were not touched. Men in the mixed-gender dyads consumed more alcohol when the women was touched. Same-gender (men-men) dyads aggregately consumed more alcohol than mixed-gender dyads. The results are interpreted in terms of the environmental cues and the dynamics of the group.     

Modulating the sense of agency with external cues

We investigate the processes underlying the feeling of control over one’s actions (“sense of agency”). Sense of agency may depend on internal motoric signals, and general inferences about external events. We used priming to modulate the sense of agency for voluntary and involuntary movements, by modifying the content of conscious thought prior to moving. Trials began with the presentation of one of two supraliminal primes, which corresponded to the effect of a voluntary action participants subsequently made. The perceived interval between movement and effect was used as an implicit measure of sense of agency. Primes modulated perceived intervals for both voluntary and involuntary movements, but the modulation was greatest for involuntary movements. A second experiment showed that this modulation depended on prime–movement (temporal) contiguity. We propose that sense of agency is based on a combination of internal motoric signals and external sensory evidence about the source of actions and effects.