Mutual touch during mother–infant face-to-face still-face interactions: Influences of interaction period and infant birth status

Contact behaviours such as touch, have been shown to be influential channels of nonverbal communication between mothers and infants. While existing research has examined the communicative roles of maternal or infant touch in isolation, mutual touch, whereby touching behaviours occur simultaneously between mothers and their infants, has yet to be examined. The present study was designed to investigate mutual touch during face-to-face interactions between mothers and their 5½-month-old fullterm (n = 40), very low birth weight/preterm (VLBW/preterm; n = 40) infants, and infants at psychosocial risk (n = 41). Objectives were to examine: (1) how the quantitative and qualitative aspects of touch employed by mothers and their infants varied across the normal periods of the still-face (SF) procedure, and (2) how these were associated with risk status. Mutual touch was systematically coded using the mother–infant touch scale. Interactions were found to largely consist of mutual touch and one-sided touch plus movement, highlighting that active touching is pervasive during mother–infant interactions. Consistent with the literature, while the SF period did not negatively affect the amount of mutual touch engaged in for mothers and their fullterm infants and mothers and their infants at psychosocial risk, it did for mothers and their VLBW/preterm infants. Together, results illuminate how both mothers and infants participate in shaping and co-regulating their interactions through the use of touch and underscore the contribution of examining the influence of birth status on mutual touch.     

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.     

Depressive Symptomatology and College Persistence among African American College Students

ABSTRACT. While many studies find women self-report higher disgust sensitivity than men, few studies have examined gender differences with behavioral tasks in senses other than vision. On a haptic task, we tested the hypothesis that women would report greater disgust but not greater unpleasantness than men. Forty-four undergraduates (29 women) touched 8 out-of-sight stimuli with sensory (unpleasantness) and emotional (disgust) responses recorded. The stimuli consisted of 2 neutral, 2 pleasant, and 4 unpleasant (3 disgust-evoking) objects. No gender differences were found for reporting stimuli unpleasantness. In contrast, women rated their disgust significantly higher than men when touching the high disgust-evoking objects. Unpleasantness of the stimuli correlated with disgust to the objects, but disgust sensitivity (Disgust Scale-Revised) was not a strong predictor of disgust responses. Besides differentiating unpleasantness from disgust, this was also the first study to show gender differences in a disgust-evoking haptic task.     

A Multi‐criteria Usability Assessment of Similar Types of Touch Screen Mobile Phones

Designing products possessing only technical perfectness does not seem to be enough in today's market. New expectations adding value to the product such as product usability and feelings have become more important. Consequently, product usability has become a major focus of manufacturing companies. In this study, touch screen cell phones are examined, and various specifications that affect the usability are researched. Usability tests were carried out with the participation of 15 subjects for four different brands of touch screen phones having the highest market share. The usability factors regarding questionnaires were evaluated by taking into consideration the relationships between them in a three‐stage (strategic, tactical and operational) hierarchical network model. Analytical network process method was used in order to analyse the network for end consumer. The results were evaluated within the general framework of the hierarchy, and the most important factors in respect of usability were calculated. Moreover, the usability levels of four brands were ranked evaluating the usability scores. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visual enhancement of touch and the bodily self

We experience our own body through both touch and vision. We further see that others’ bodies are similar to our own body, but we have no direct experience of touch on others’ bodies. Therefore, relations between vision and touch are important for the sense of self and for mental representation of one’s own body. For example, seeing the hand improves tactile acuity on the hand, compared to seeing a non-hand object. While several studies have demonstrated this visual enhancement of touch (VET) effect, its relation to the ‘bodily self’, or mental representation of one’s own body remains unclear. We examined whether VET is an effect of seeing a hand, or of seeing my hand, using the rubber hand illusion. In this illusion, a prosthetic hand which is brushed synchronously—but not asynchronously—with one’s own hand is felt to actually be one’s hand. Thus, we manipulated whether or not participants felt like they were looking directly at their hand, while holding the actual stimulus they viewed constant. Tactile acuity was measured by having participants judge the orientation of square-wave gratings. Two characteristic effects of VET were observed: (1) cross-modal enhancement from seeing the hand was inversely related to overall tactile acuity, and (2) participants near sensory threshold showed significant improvement following synchronous stroking, compared to asynchronous stroking or no stroking at all. These results demonstrate a clear functional relation between the bodily self and basic tactile perception.     

Multisensory Information in the Control of Complex Motor Actions

ABSTRACT— For many of the complex motor actions we perform, perceptual information is available from several different senses including vision, touch, hearing, and the vestibular system. Here I discuss the use of multisensory information for the control of motor action in three particular domains: aviation, sports, and driving. It is shown that performers in these domains use information from multiple senses—frequently with beneficial effects on performance but sometimes with dangerous consequences. Applied psychologists have taken advantage of our natural tendency to integrate sensory information by designing multimodal displays that compensate for situations in which information from one or more of our senses is unreliable or is unattended due to distraction.     

自我相关信息的加工优势：来自网名识别的证据

以网名为材料, 通过三项视觉搜索实验考察了与自我相关的网络信息可能存在的加工优势。结果发现, 自己的网名在作为靶刺激时可以更快且更准确地被探测出来; 而在作为干扰刺激时, 其对于靶刺激却并未表现出比对照刺激更强的抑制作用。在与真实人名进行的直接比较中, 自己的网名与真实人名的加工成绩未出现显著差异, 且都好于作为对照的名人名字。这些结果证明了与自我相关的网络信息具有和物理世界中的自我信息相似的加工优势, 且与以真实人名为材料的多项实验结果完全一致, 从而表明自己的网名与真实人名可能具有相同的加工机制。     

The screen function of unconscious fantasy

Although being a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis, fantasy is an ambiguous term. It covers a vast field of conscious and unconscious phenomena, from daydreaming, the manifest narration of the patient’s world of imagination to unconscious fantasy and primal fantasy. Further, it introduces the delicate alternatives of imaginary versus real, subject versus object and internal versus external. Following Freud’s reflections on the ambiguity of fantasy, we arrive at an idea introduced by Freud himself, but elaborated years later by Lacan. Fantasy, accordingly, is seen as a screen which both reveals and conceals. Our aim is to demonstrate, theoretical as well as clinical, how unconscious fantasy serves as a window into not only repressed wishes and conflicts, but also the most primary scenes where the subject may not even have a specific place. Simultaneously, it is the site of protection and defence, including projection and denial, but also repetition of what we will call the identical. A clinical case will be presented to illustrate our theoretical ideas and their clinical implications.     

质地密度逐渐变化对触觉识别的作用

研究关于输入、本体感受和输出对表面触觉认知的影响,旨在探索运用触觉识别质地密度逐渐变化的表面时,理论关于表面粗糙度恒定的情况下,主动手指运动产生的信息不影响触觉认知的解释是否仍然成立。实验采用表面质地密度呈正态曲线式逐渐变化,组成正负两组变化方向。正方向变化为表面质点密度向中逐渐增大,与手指触摸运动的加减速方式一致;负方向变化为表面质点密度向中逐渐减小,与手指触摸运动的加减速方式相反;另外包括一个表面密度不变的平面。让被试辨别表面质地密度变化的方向,结果发现被试能够很好地判别表面质地密度变化的方向,但在判别正向变化的表面时显得更准确;当表面密度没有变化时,被试倾向于判别为正向变化。这一发现没有支持表面密度恒定的触觉认知解释模型。与常规直觉相反,研究还发现即时反馈并没有改进触觉识别,反而降低了辨别的正确率。质地密度逐渐变化的触觉识别在变化的大小、准确和自信心方面都显示了不同,但没有发现认知学习作用该触觉任务辨别的过程。基于这些发现,文章讨论了触觉质地感知和有关存在的理论解释模式。