ArticleDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2019
Exposure shapes the perception of affective touch.
Article in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 92 citations in OpenAlex.
- Vicarious Touch: A Potential Substitute for Social Touch During Touch Deprivation.European journal of social psychology · 2026Article
- The emotional responses to the sounds of organic affective tactile gestures.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Is cultural context the crucial touch? Neurophysiological and self-reported responses to affective touch in women in South Africa and the United Kingdom.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Can impersonal touch replace interpersonal touch? An investigation using the rubber hand illusion.PloS one · 2025Article
- The Hedonic Experience Associated with a Gentle Touch Is Preserved in Women with Fibromyalgia.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Sleep, Mental Health, and the Need for Physical and Real-Life Social Contact with (Non-)Family Members during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Bayesian Network Analysis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- The meaning of touch: Relational and individual variables shape emotions and intentions associated with imagined social touch.European journal of social psychology · 2024Article
- Review
- Simulating the psychological and neural effects of affective touch with soft robotics: an experimental study.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2024Article
- Article
- Stroking in early mother-infant exchanges: The role of maternal tactile biography and interoceptive sensibility.PloS one · 2024Article
- Reliability and validity of a simplified touch experiences and attitudes questionnaire for Chinese college students.PloS one · 2024Article
- Longing for touch post-COVID-19: current observations and future directions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Love and affectionate touch toward romantic partners all over the world.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Somatovisceral influences on emotional development.Emotion review : journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion · 2023Article
- Horses' Tactile Reactivity Differs According to the Type of Work: The Example of Equine-Assisted Intervention.Veterinary sciences · 2023Article
- Caressed by music: Related preferences for velocity of touch and tempo of music?Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Therapeutic touch and therapeutic alliance in pediatric care and neonatology: An active inference framework.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Article
- Depression severity is associated with reduced pleasantness of observed social touch and fewer current intimate touch experiences.PloS one · 2023Article
- The perception of affective touch in women affected by obesity.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Touch is a common occurrence in our lives, where affective and inter-personal aspects of touch are important for our well-being. We investigated whether touch exposure affects hedonic and discriminative aspects of tactile perception. The perceived pleasantness and intensity of gentle forearm stroking, over different velocities, was assessed in individuals reporting to seldom receive inter-personal touch, and in controls who received touch often. The groups did not differ in their stroking intensity judgements, nor in tactile discrimination sensitivity; however, individuals with low touch exposure evaluated the pleasantness of touch differently. These individuals did not differentiate pleasantness over the stroking velocities in the same way as the control group. The pleasantness curve for the low touch exposure group was significantly flatter and they rated 3cm/s stroking as significantly less pleasant. Other physiological and questionnaire measures were obtained and the appreciation of touch from familiar persons was positively related to the pleasantness of touch in controls, but this was not found in low touch exposure individuals. This suggests that the association of human caresses from well-known individuals, with the pleasure derived, may depend on continued exposure to it.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.