Lexicon and Scenarios of Touch Perception: Towards Developing a Research Thesaurus

Abstract

The paper shows the important advance in sensory neuroscience achieved with a recent discovery of C-tactile system integrating mechanosensitive C fibers that innervate the hairy skin and representing the neurobiological substrate for the affective and rewarding properties of touch. It has drawn scientists' attention to social touch research and has increased the demand for developing psychometric instruments of touch perception assessment calling for developing an elaborated and cross-culturally validated touch lexicon. The paper focuses on creating a Russian touch lexicon and assessing the relevance of different sensory and emotional characteristics (a list of 270 adjectives and participles) to active ('I touch', 80 participants) and passive ('I am being touched', 75 participants) scenarios of touch perception by native speakers of the Russian language. A comparison to previously reported data for the sample of American English speakers has revealed a general similarity of Russian and English touch lexicons. Active touch perception scenario was characterized by the dominance of haptic characteristics (features relevant to sensory properties of objects), while in passive touch perception scenario a prominent increase was observed for the perceived relevance of touch recipient's sensory experience characteristics including words related to pain, tickle, chafing, and itch. The results suggest that the choice of particular words used in task descriptions and in semantic differential scales should be made relevant to the particular touch perception scenarios, rather than relying on a limited generic touch lexicon.