Being touched by another person influences our readiness to empathize with and support that person. We asked whether this influence arises from somatosensory experience, the proximity to the person and/or an attribution of the somatosensory experience to the person. Moreover, we were interested in whether and how touch affects the processing of ensuing events. To this end, we presented neutral and negative pictures with or without gentle pressure to the participants' forearm. In Experiment 1, pressure was applied by a friend, applied by a tactile device and attributed to the friend, or applied by a tactile device and attributed to a computer. Across these conditions, touch enhanced event-related potential (ERP) correlates of picture processing. Pictures elicited a larger posterior N100 and a late positivity discriminated more strongly between pictures of neutral and negative content when participants were touched. Experiment 2 replicated these findings while controlling for the predictive quality of touch. Experiment 3 replaced tactile contact with a tone, which failed to enhance N100 amplitude and emotion discrimination reflected by the late positivity. This indicates that touch sensitizes ongoing cognitive and emotional processes and that this sensitization is mediated by bottom-up somatosensory processing. Moreover, touch seems to be a special sensory signal that influences recipients in the absence of conscious reflection and that promotes prosocial behavior.
This paper investigates whether and how digitally mediated social touch (remote touch) may influence the sense of connectedness toward a speaker and the emotional experience of what is being communicated. We employ an 'augmented' storytelling methodology where we manipulate the modality of an 'emotive' channel that accompanies the speech, and the contextual expectation of the listener. Comparing a remote upper-arm touch against a similarly timed flashing light, we explore the importance of the touch modality in affect conveyance. Our second manipulation involves two cover stories where the listener is told that the touch or flashing light is triggered either by the storyteller expressively squeezing a touch input device while speaking, or by measured 'high points' in the mental state of the storyteller. Our results show that the story accompanied by communicative touch resulted in a significant increase in the sense of connectedness with the storyteller over the speech-only condition, and a trend toward greater affective conveyance.
________________________________________________________________________________________This article outlines an overview of new paradigms in social and physical interaction in mixed-reality entertainment. Social and physical interactions are constrained, and thus natural interactions are lost in most current digital entertainment systems. In order to regain natural interactions, we argue that mixed-reality technology has great potential for promoting social and physical interactions. In this article we present five research prototype systems, Magic Land, Human Pacman, Kyoto Garden, Poultry Internet, and Free Network Visible Network (FNVN), to explain methods to regain natural social and physical interactions in mixed-reality entertainment. We believe these systems are part of a new form of entertainment based on physicality, mobility, tangible social interaction, and ubiquitous computing. Some details, benefits, and issues regarding design are discussed.
The advent of Internet technologies since decades ago has propelled distance learning drastically. In this modern world, knowledge develops so fast that the amount of intellectual information that needs to be learnt before it becomes obsolete again is so huge. Distance learningthrough the use of Internet technologies has the advantage of being able to get across the information to the students remotely and effortlessly. The other advantage, which is the main focus of this paper, is that students are able to learn from their instructors on an entirely new media platform - the Internet-enabled and tangible user interface. This paper discusses how to use two main new media: multi-modal Internet technologies, namely remote physical interface and remote augmented reality technology in distance learning.
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