ArticlePsychiatry and clinical neurosciences2025
Atypical tactile preferences in autism spectrum disorder: Reduced pleasantness responses to soft objects resembling human body parts.
Article in Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sensory Reactivity in Autism: Integrating Behavioural, Affective, Physiological, and Neural Dimensions.Current psychiatry reports · 2026Review
- First-person visual perspective enhances audiovisual synchrony effects in autonomous sensory meridian response.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Reduced relationship-specific social touching and atypical association with emotional bonding in autistic adults.Molecular autism · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
aimPrevious studies have reported atypical sensory responses in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their implications for social touch. Although adults with ASD often report discomfort with being touched by others, their preferences for the physical properties of objects are less well understood. In a prior study, we observed that, in typically developed (TD) adults, compliance (a physical correlate of softness) increased tactile pleasantness for deformable surfaces up to levels comparable to those of human body parts. In the present study, we conducted psychophysical experiments to test whether individuals with ASD show atypical affective responses to soft objects resembling human body parts.
methodsThirty-six adults with ASD and 36 TD adults numerically estimated the perceived pleasantness or softness while lightly pressing urethane rubbers with their right index fingers.
resultsThe results revealed that pleasantness increased as a function of compliance, but this increase was significantly smaller for patients with ASD than TD adults, particularly at compliance levels including human body parts. However, the perceived softness increased as a function of compliance highly similarly between the ASD and TD groups.
conclusionsThese findings demonstrate an atypical preference of individuals with ASD for soft objects such as human body parts, which may help explain their tendency to avoid social touch.
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