Linking Haptic Parameters to the Emotional Space for Mediated Social Touch

Auteur-es

Carine Rognon, Benjamin Stephens-Fripp, Jess Hartcher-O’Brien, Bob Rost, Ali Israr

Nombre Auteurs

5

Titre

Linking Haptic Parameters to the Emotional Space for Mediated Social Touch

Année de publication

2022

Référence (APA)

Rognon, C., Stephens-Fripp, B., Hartcher-O’Brien, J., & Israr, A. (2022). Linking Haptic Parameters to the Emotional Space for Mediated Social Touch. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2022.826545

résumé

Social touch is essential for creating and maintaining strong interpersonal bonds amongst humans. However, when distance separates users, they often rely on voice and video communication technologies to stay connected with each other, and the lack of tactile interactions between users lowers the quality of the social interactions. In this research, we investigated haptic patterns to communicate five tactile messages comprising of four types of social touch (high five, handshake, caress, and asking for attention) and one physiological signal (the pulse of a heartbeat), delivered on the hand through a haptic glove. Since social interactions are highly dependent on their context, we conceived two interaction scenarios for each of the five tactile messages, conveying distinct emotions being spread across the circumplex model of emotions. We conducted two user studies: in the first one participants tuned the parameters of haptic patterns to convey tactile messages in each scenario, and a follow up study tested naïve participants to assess the validity of these patterns. Our results show that all haptic patterns were recognized above chance level, and the well-defined parameter clusters had a higher recognition rate, reinforcing the hypothesis that some social touches have more universal patterns than others. We also observed parallels between the parameters’ levels and the type of emotions they conveyed based on their mapping in the circumplex model of emotions.

Mots-clés

Social Touch, Mediated Social Touch, Affective Touch, Haptics, Human Computer Interaction, Emotional Space

URL

https://research.facebook.com/file/565647498393044/Linking-Haptic-Parameters-to-the-Emotional-Space-for-Mediated-Social-Touch.pdf

doi

https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2022.826545

Accessibilité de l'article

Libre

Champ

AR/VR

Type contenu (théorique Applicative méthodologique)

Méthodologique

Méthode

The first study had participants tune parameters for ten different interaction scenarios. The second study had participants attempt to recognize the correct interaction scenario using the tuned parameters from the first study

Cas d'usage

N/A

Objectifs de l'article

The objectives of the article were to explore how haptic patterns can be used to communicate tactile messages and physiological signals, such as high fives, handshakes, caresses, and heartbeats, through a haptic glove, and to investigate how these patterns can convey distinct emotions across the circumplex model of emotions.

"we aim to look at building blocks of social touch and how users can tune them to haptically represent emotional content. In addition, we aim to determine how well these parameters can be generalized across participants."

Question(s) de recherche/Hypothèses/conclusion

The research question was how can haptic patterns be used to convey different tactile messages and emotions in mediated social touch?

The hypothesis is that some social touches have more universal patterns thanothers. The hypothesis was that haptic patterns can be used to convey distinct emotions across the circumplex model of emotions and that these patterns can be recognized above chance level, demonstrating their potential for enhancing social interactions in distance communication.

The conclusions are that the patterns derived from the first user study are generalizable to naïve users and that specific emotions belong to a specific area of the parametric space

Cadre théorique/Auteur.es

The theoretical framework of the article is based on the circumplex model of emotions, which is a two-dimensional model that organizes emotions based on their valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low). The main authors cited include James A. Russell and Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Concepts clés

Haptic messages, Emotional content

Données collectées (type source)

Demographics from the participants (questionnaire), participants rated the haptic signal depending on the corresponding social touch and scenario.

Définition des émotions

Non
Valence and arousal

Ampleur expérimentation (volume de comptes)

14 participants

Technologies associées

Haptic glove, Oculus head mounted display, VR environment

Mention de l'éthique

Non

Finalité communicationnelle

"These results demonstrate the potential of creating haptic building blocks to map a social touch to the emotional spaces."