Affective touch plays an important role in children's social interaction and is involved in shaping the development of the social brain. The positive affective component of touch is thought to be conveyed via a group of unmyelinated, low-threshold mechanoreceptive afferents, known as C-tactile fibers that are optimally activated by gentle, slow, stroking touch. Touch targeting these C-tactile f...

Subjects were presented with pairs of tactile drifting sinusoids and made speed discrimination judgments. On some trials, a visual drifting sinusoid, which subjects were instructed to ignore, was presented simultaneously with one of the two tactile stimuli. When the visual and tactile gratings drifted in the same direction (i.e. from left to right), the visual distractors were found to increase...

Body image disturbances are central to anorexia nervosa (AN). Previous studies have focused mainly on attitudinal and visual aspects. Studies on somatosensory aspects thus far have been scarce. We therefore investigated whether AN patients and controls differed in tactile perception, and how this tactile body image related to visual body image and body dissatisfaction. The Tactile Estimation Ta...

Virtual surface characteristics of tactile displays are investigated to characterize the feeling of human touch for a haptic interface application. In order to represent the tactile feeling, a prototype tactile display incorporating Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluid has been developed. Tactile display devices simulate the finger's skin to feel the sensations of contact such as compliance, friction...

In this paper, we quantify several spatial capabilities of the hmnan tactile system needed for tactile feedback, or teletaction. Psychophysics experiments measure the amplitude resolution of the human tactile system, the effects of shear stress on grating orientation discrimination, and the effects of viscoelasticity {creep and relaxation) on tactile perception for static touch. The results are...

This paper presents initial results in integrating touch with vision for delicate manipulation tasks. A generalizable framework of behavioral primitives for tactile and visual feedback control is proposed. Since vision provides position and shape information at a distance, while tactile provides small-scale geometric and force information, we focus on the complimentary roles of vision and touch...

Mental workload can be defined as the ratio of demand to allocated resources. Multipleresource theory stresses the importance of distribution of tasks and information across various human sensory channels to reduce mental workload. One sensory channel that has been of interest since the late 1800s is touch. Unlike the more typical displays that target vision or hearing, tactile displays present...

A kind of new material suitable for flexible tactile sensor and its preparation method will be introduced. The tactile sensor applied this new material and method can be used in many kinds of occasions which contacting pressure measurement such as humanoid robot sensitive skin, medicine and so on. This material is composite of carbon black and silicone rubber filled nano-SiO2 as the main raw ma...

and sighted participants and its implications for tactile map creation. ABSTRACT Objective: To determine the optimal elevation of tactile map symbols. Background: Tactile perception research predicts that symbol elevation (vertical height) and texture on tactile maps could influence their readability. However, while research has shown that elevation influences detection and discrimination thres...

Previous research has shown that odorants consistently evoke associations with textures and their tactile properties like smoothness and roughness. Also, it has been observed that olfaction can modulate tactile perception. We therefore hypothesized that tactile roughness perception may be biased towards the somatosensory connotation of an ambient odorant. We performed two experiments to test th...