The Experience of Social Touch in Multi-User Virtual Reality

Sykownik, Philipp; Masuch, Maic

doi:10.1145/3385956.3418944

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…For example, according to [28] using a vest equipped with multiple vibrotactile actuators, body location led to reactions similar to those observed in the case of physical touch, although this was not gender related. Yet studies reported in [21,34,71] seem to suggest the opposite, i.e. similarity in responses between physical and digital touch were related to dyad's gender.…”

Section: How Is Affective Touch Created and Interpreted?mentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Issues of control and privacy emerged as critical and somewhat inter-related in remote communication since the typical means to enact them are partially lost [65,80]. The study in VR [71] showed that the direction of initiation of touch (i.e., who in the dyad initiated touch) has a strong effect on a variety of emotions (e.g., anxiety, disgust, happiness). Our participants sought the possibility to explicitly control not just touch but also which haptic channels were left open for reception.…”

Section: Sense Of Control and Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Making of Meaning through Dyadic Haptic Affective Touch

Price¹,

Bianchi-Berthouze²,

Jewitt³

et al. 2022

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.

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Despite the importance of touch in human–human relations, research in affective tactile practices is in its infancy, lacking in-depth understanding needed to inform the design of remote digital touch communication. This article reports two qualitative studies that explore tactile affective communication in specific social contexts, and the bi-directional creation, sending and interpretation of digital touch messages using a purpose-built research tool, the Tactile Emoticon. The system comprises a pair of remotely connected mitts, which enable users in different locations to communicate through tactile messages, by orchestrating duration and level of three haptic sensations: vibration, pressure and temperature. Qualitative analysis shows the nuanced ways in which 68 participants configured these elements to make meaning from touch messages they sent and received. It points to the affect and emotion of touch, its sensoriality and ambiguity, the significance of context, social norms and expectations of touch participants. Findings suggest key design considerations for digital touch communication, where the emphasis shifts from generating ‘recognizable touches’ to tools that allow people to shape their touches and establish common understanding about their meaning.

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Section: How Is Affective Touch Created and Interpreted?mentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Sense Of Control and Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Making of Meaning through Dyadic Haptic Affective Touch

Price¹,

Bianchi-Berthouze²,

Jewitt³

et al. 2022

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This non-parametrical rank-based test was elaborated to analyse longitudinal data in factorial designs with the aim to investigate treatment effects, time effect and their interaction effects. Indeed, this analysis estimates the relative treatment effects (RTEs), comparable to the concept of relative marginal effects (for more information about the analysis and the nparLD R package, see Noguchi et al, 2012; for a similar application of WTS on repeated measures data see Soto et al, 2020;Sykownik & Masuch, 2020). However, repeated measures designs are conceptually included in longitudinal designs, since one of their characteristics is the inclusion of several measurements of the same variable collected on the same participant.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is motor inhibition involved in the processing of sentential negation? An assessment via the Stop-Signal Task

Montalti

Calbi

Cuccio

et al. 2021

Psychological Research

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In the last decades, the embodied approach to cognition and language gained momentum in the scientific debate, leading to evidence in different aspects of language processing. However, while the bodily grounding of concrete concepts seems to be relatively not controversial, abstract aspects, like the negation logical operator, are still today one of the main challenges for this research paradigm. In this framework, the present study has a twofold aim: (1) to assess whether mechanisms for motor inhibition underpin the processing of sentential negation, thus, providing evidence for a bodily grounding of this logic operator, (2) to determine whether the Stop-Signal Task, which has been used to investigate motor inhibition, could represent a good tool to explore this issue. Twenty-three participants were recruited in this experiment. Ten hand-action-related sentences, both in affirmative and negative polarity, were presented on a screen. Participants were instructed to respond as quickly and accurately as possible to the direction of the Go Stimulus (an arrow) and to withhold their response when they heard a sound following the arrow. This paradigm allows estimating the Stop Signal Reaction Time (SSRT), a covert reaction time underlying the inhibitory process. Our results show that the SSRT measured after reading negative sentences are longer than after reading affirmative ones, highlighting the recruitment of inhibitory mechanisms while processing negative sentences. Furthermore, our methodological considerations suggest that the Stop-Signal Task is a good paradigm to assess motor inhibition’s role in the processing of sentence negation.

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“…HMD-based virtual reality has the potential to become a technology-mediated mode of communication that can psychologically feel near identical to face-to-face interaction (Rosedale, 2016). There is potential to achieve this via advancements in motion capture technology and haptic devices (Pan & Hamilton, 2018;Pan & Steed, 2019;Parger et al, 2020;Seymour et al, 2019;Sykownik & Masuch, 2020). Future research is needed to fast-track the development of this new mode of social interaction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change in mental health, physical health, and social relationships during highly restrictive lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from Australia

Rogers¹,

Cruickshank²

2020

Preprint

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We surveyed a sample of people from the Australian public about their concerns and mental health (n = 1599) during COVID-19 lock-down. When estimating their mental health for the previous year 13% of participants reported more negative than positive emotion, whereas this increased to 41% when participants reflected on their prior month during COVID-19 lock-down. A substantial proportion (39-54%) of participants reported deterioration in mental health, physical health, financial situation, and work productivity. Less impact was apparent for social relationships as participants compensated for decreased face-to-face interaction via increased technology-mediated interaction. We found evidence to suggest a general increase in compassion for others, as participants reported that due to the pandemic they were feeling more concerned about the welfare of people close to them (87%), and people in general (84%). However, the extent of increased concern for others was also found to be negatively associated with mental health. Most participants reported a generally favourable attitude regarding the government pandemic response. This study reveals that even when the public are largely supportive of the government response to a pandemic there can still be large public health implications due to the overall level of disruption to people's lives.

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The Experience of Social Touch in Multi-User Virtual Reality

Abstract: Figure 1: Participants performed the interactions depicted above with a physically remote research assistant in VR. We compared the emotional experience of the two intimacy groups (high vs. low intimacy) regarding the influence of intimacy, direction of touch and sex of participant.

Cited by 22 publications

References 59 publications

The Making of Meaning through Dyadic Haptic Affective Touch

The Making of Meaning through Dyadic Haptic Affective Touch

Is motor inhibition involved in the processing of sentential negation? An assessment via the Stop-Signal Task

Change in mental health, physical health, and social relationships during highly restrictive lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from Australia

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