Examining the Relationship Between Touch and Visual Perception: Pareidolia Perception in the Social Brain

Abstract

Purpose: Human perception is a complex system based on the interaction of different modalities. However, it is unclear how adults’ perception of social touch influences their social dimension of visual perception. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between social touch perception and visual perception in the social brain. 
 Materials and methods: The survey study recruited 802 healthy participants. Thus, a self-report survey that included the Social Touch Questionnaire consisting of three factors and the pareidolia test were used. Pearson’s Correlation and one- way ANOVA was performed for analysis. 
 Result: We display a statistically significant negative correlation between face reaction time, personal social touch factor, and liking personal social touch factor. An adverse important relationship emerged between pareidolia reaction time, liking of personal social touch, and social touch behavior factors. 
 Conclusion: According to our results, multimodal perception necessitates the simultaneous activation of multiple heteromodal associations in the social brain. Our findings can be interpreted as an interaction between the Dorsal and Ventral Attention Networks and the Social Brain Network.