Contact Comfort Research Articles

Comfort of Wrist-Worn Devices: Development of an Assessment Tool and Measurement of Comfort-Discomfort Pressure for Older and Younger Users

Wrist-worn devices hold significant potential for health monitoring, particularly for older people. However, the adoption and continuous usage of these devices are heavily affected by wearing comfort. Currently, there is still a lack of validated assessment tools specifically developed to evaluate the comfort of such devices. Additionally, while pressure is critical for both proper device placement and maintaining comfort, quantitative references for suitbale pressure levels are scarce. Moreover, the impact of age difference on comfort perceptions have been largely overlooked. To address these gaps, we conducted two experiments involving 18 older and 18 younger participants. In Experiment 1, we gathered comfort evaluations from participants while wearing the devices in both home/office and exercise scenarios. In Experiment 2, we focused on pressure, measuring the pressure on participants’ wrists under three strap material conditions and collecting their corresponding comfort evaluations. The results established three dimensions of comfort: movement comfort, thermophysiological comfort, and contact comfort, with their relative importance varying by age and use scenario. Also, we identified comfort-discomfort pressure ranges for both age groups, highlighting the influence of strap material and age on comfort perceptions. These findings offer valuable design guidance for manufacturers and enhance understanding of wrist-mounted device comfort.

Are people more averse to microbe-sharing contact with ethnic outgroup members? A registered report

Intergroup biases are widespread across cultures and time. The current study tests an existing hypothesis that has been proposed to explain such biases: the mind has evolved to interpret outgroup membership as a cue to pathogen threat. In this registered report, we test a core feature of this hypothesis. Adapting methods from earlier work, we examine (1) whether people are less comfortable with microbe-sharing contact with an ethnic outgroup member than an ethnic ingroup member, and (2) whether this difference is exacerbated by additional visual cues to a target's infectiousness. Using Chinese ( N = 1533) and British ( N = 1371) samples recruited from the online platforms WJX and Prolific, we assessed contact comfort with targets who were either East Asian or White and who were either modified to have symptoms of infection or unmodified (or, for exploratory purposes, modified to wear facemasks). Contact comfort was lower for targets modified to have symptoms of infection. However, we detected no differences in contact comfort with ethnic-ingroup targets versus ethnic-outgroup targets. These results do not support the hypothesis that people interpret ethnic outgroup membership alone as a cue to infection risk.

Assistive Relief Tool for Early Childhood and Special Psychological Symptom Groups during the Pandemic: Clothing Design Based on the Virtual Contact Principle.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some special populations—groups of early childhood and people with autism, among others—faced more profound challenges than the common people. The lack of real physical contact such as embracing greatly affected the effectiveness of development, psychiatric treatment, and other processes for these populations. This study is aimed at developing clothing with appropriate contact pressure based on the contact comfort principle of psychology and providing a type of pressure clothing that can relieve the wearer's tension by simulating hugging, alleviating the lack of physical contact for early childhood education and special education groups during the pandemic. First, the elementary requirements of clothing design are attained using a questionnaire survey and test method. The analysis revealed that clothing should fulfill the four requirements of pressure comfort, fabric softness, wearing and taking off comfort, and visual beauty. Second, we realized the performance requirements in the fabric and accessories, style design, structure design, and functional design. Finally, the product experience is proposed through a fitting, and the reasonable opinions were fed back to the product design to enhance the functionality of clothing. The research shows that clothing can simulate hugging and can ease the loneliness of the wearer. This study can be used as a good tool to assist during the pandemic for early childhood education and special psychological symptom groups, as well as a broader group of people living alone at home, to play an adjunctive treatment and loneliness relief functions.

Study on the threshold range of polyester ratio for polyester/viscose blended fabrics based on cognitive psychology

As the market of polyester/viscose (P/V) blended fabric has enlarged, some standards have been introduced, but less information about the influences of blending ratio to product quality as well as customers’ experience are available. This paper studied the threshold of polyester ratio of a weft plain P/V blended knit by using subjective measurement based on the cognitive psychological method. Nine types of P/V blended fabrics with a gradient of 5% for P/V blends from 50/50 to 90/10 were used in the experiment. Five evaluation indexes were selected and used to scale the contact comfort in subjective tests. A total of 160 people participated in the tests and provided their scale data. The scales were normalized and averaged, and the threshold of individual index was calculated. Through analytic hierarchy process（AHP）method and expert survey, the weights of the selected indexes were determined. As a result, the comprehensive index evaluation model was extracted and the threshold of the comprehensive index was obtained. The study showed that the threshold of polyester ratio for the knitted fabric that the human body could perceive is 8.31%.

The skin deformation during cycling on terrains for practical application of compression sportswear

In this study, it is postulated that information based on skin layer deformation is necessary for the design of next-to-skin functional cycling suit. Especially for shoulder–chest region, shoulder–back region, waist–abdomen region and waist–hip region, which are critical factors in contact comfort sensations. The skin length deformation during three different road conditions (including uphill, downhill and normal road) and four cycling motions in various longitudinal, horizontal and curved directions were measured. The amount of skin deformation was slightly different for each of the five subjects, but the basic tendency of boundary between extension and contraction of skin surface was very much within the same region. The research results will help to improve cycling clothing in terms of function and comfort under the premise of the adaptation of human movement.

Large cyclic deformability of microcellular TPU/MWCNT composite film with conductive stability, and electromagnetic interference shielding and self-cleaning performance

Materials with those characteristics of lightweight, thin, deformable, conductive stability, and self-cleaning have a nice application foreground in flexible conductive field. Herein, the thin and lightweight material with effectively bonded surface of carbon nanotube is prepared by carbon dioxide foaming technology that is environmentally friendly and simple process. The base material is selected from an elastomer, that is, thermoplastic polyurethane, which promotes the prepared cellular material with 0.6 mm thickness to have good flexibility and contact comfort. The material undergoes multiple cyclic tensile deformations under 100% strain, resulting in low hysteresis and residual strain. After 12 h of recovery time, the material can almost return to its original length. For these excellent deformation capabilities, the cellular structure introduced inside the material matrix plays a crucial role. Based on exactly the same reason, after 50 cycles of cyclic tensile process, the designed material's conductivity has not changed significantly before and after deformation, ensuring the stability of the conductive performance under multiple large deformations. The EMI SE after cyclic deformations is further promoted to be 18 dB. Moreover, the bonding layer on the material surface effectively shows good self-cleaning ability, and water contact angle is about 130°.

Exploring Non-linear Correlation Between Contact Pressure and Comfort of Customised Hand Orthoses

Exploring Non-linear Correlation Between Contact Pressure and Comfort of Customised Hand Orthoses

Brain signal changes of sensory cortex according to surface roughness of boneless corsets

The tactile perception of fabric surface properties in the brain has always been a major research issue in the study of the contact comfort of fabrics. This study introduced the concept of PSC (percent signal change) obtained by fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) technology to explore the perceptual brain regions concerned with the roughness of the fabric surface. Firstly, the PSCs of human somatosensory cortexes, including the SI (primary somatosensory cortex) and SII (secondary somatosensory cortex), under the stimulation of boneless corsets with different surface roughness, were extracted and analyzed. As the surface roughness of the fabric increased gradually from smooth to rough, the brain region in which the maximum PSC occurred gradually transited from the SI to the SII, which indicated that the SI brain region paid more attention to the contact of smooth fabrics, while the SII brain region laid emphasis on the fine tactile perception of rough fabrics. Furthermore, the result of sub-regions in the SI and SII showed that, with the increase of the roughness of the fabric surface, the PSC of the OP2 (Operculum Parietal 2) brain region increased significantly, and the brain region concerned with the fabric surface tactile stimulation was gradually transferred from the slow adaptive sensory projection Brain Area 3a in the SI to the fast adaptive sensory projection Brain Area 1 in the SI, and finally moved to OP2 in the deep cortex of the SII.

Research on the Public Comfort Cognition of Silk Fabrics for Garment---Base on the Survey Data from Hangzhou, China

As the traditional products with local characteristics in Hangzhou, silk has numerous excellent qualities. However, public cognition degree about the performance of silk fabrics remains unclear. In this paper, taking comfort as the entry point, the thesis retrieves seven indicators related to temperature comfort and contact comfort to develop silk fabrics comfort measurement scale based on traditional evaluation methods, and public comfort cognition of silk fabrics for garment is investigated through questionnaire. According to the results, the public have higher awareness to skin comfort and softness of silk fabrics, while have lower awareness to moisture absorption feature, heat conductivity and warmth retention property of silk fabrics; industry and experience in using exert a significant effect on their recognition, while gender, education background, occupation, and time length living in Hangzhou have no significant effect on cognition.

Harlow’s Famous Monkey Study: The Historical and Contemporary Significance of the Nature of Love

If you were to contemplate what it meant to be loved or what exactly makes you love another individual, the brunt of your conceptualization may very well stem back to Harry Harlow’s famous 1958 study, “The Nature of Love.” At a time that approached love as a child’s need to reduce primary drives via his/her mother, Harlow aimed to identify other variables that could explain the underlying affection of an infant-mother bond – such as contact comfort. To do this, Harlow conducted a series of investigations as part of a novel experimental design that used infant rhesus monkeys and a set of inanimate surrogate mothers. Not only did he propose a new social paradigm for family life, the role of mothers and fathers, and what it meant to be a loving parent in the process, Harlow distinguished himself as one of the most controversial experimental researchers in the history of psychology. The present paper explores the context of Harlow’s academic career and the zeitgeists that marked his time while also providing an in-depth analysis of his landmark 1958 study, how his work has been interpreted for over a half-century, and factors contributing to his overall legacy.

Multiobjective Design of Wearable Sensor Systems for Electrocardiogram Monitoring

Wearable sensor systems will soon become part of the available medical tools for remote and long term physiological monitoring. However, the set of variables involved in the performance of these systems are usually antagonistic, and therefore the design of usable wearable systems in real clinical applications entails a number of challenges that have to be addressed first. This paper describes a method to optimise the design of these systems for the specific application of cardiac monitoring. The method proposed is based on the selection of a subset of 5 design variables, sensor contact, location, and rotation, signal correlation, and patient comfort, and 2 objective functions, functionality and wearability. These variables are optimised using linear and nonlinear models to maximise those objective functions simultaneously. The methodology described and the results achieved demonstrate that it is possible to find an optimal solution and therefore overcome most of the design barriers that prevent wearable sensor systems from being used in normal clinical practice.

Development of a cognitive testing apparatus for socially housed mother-peer-reared infant rhesus monkeys.

Though cognitive testing of infant monkeys has been practiced for the past 40 years, these assessments have been limited primarily to nursery-reared infants due to the confounds of separating mother-reared infants for assessments. Here, we describe a pilot study in which we developed a cognitive testing apparatus for socially housed, mother-peer-reared rhesus macaques under 1 year of age (Macaca mulatta) that allowed the infants to freely return to their mothers for contact comfort. Infants aged 151.2 ± 18.3 days (mean ± SEM; n = 5) were trained and tested on an object detour reach task. Infants completed training in 5.0 ± 0.2 days, and completed testing in 6.2 ± 0.9 days. Across 4 days of testing, infants improved to nearly errorless performance (Friedman test: χ(2) = 13.27, df = 3, p = 0.004) and learned to do the task more quickly (Friedman test: χ(2) = 11.69, df = 3, p = 0.009). These are the first cognitive data in group-housed, mother-peer-reared rhesus monkeys under 1 year of age, and they underscore the utility of this apparatus for studying cognitive development in a normative population of infant monkeys.

Evolution of brain and culture: the neurological and cognitive journey from Australopithecus to Albert Einstein.

Fossil and comparative primatological evidence suggest that alterations in the development of prehistoric hominin infants kindled three consecutive evolutionary-developmental (evo-devo) trends that, ultimately, paved the way for the evolution of the human brain and cognition. In the earliest trend, infants' development of posture and locomotion became delayed because of anatomical changes that accompanied the prolonged evolution of bipedalism. Because modern humans have inherited these changes, our babies are much slower than other primates to reach developmental milestones such as standing, crawling, and walking. The delay in ancestral babies' physical development eventually precipitated an evolutionary reversal in which they became increasing unable to cling independently to their mothers. For the first time in prehistory, babies were, thus, periodically deprived of direct physical contact with their mothers. This prompted the emergence of a second evo-devo trend in which infants sought contact comfort from caregivers using evolved signals, including new ways of crying that are conserved in modern babies. Such signaling stimulated intense reciprocal interactions between prehistoric mothers and infants that seeded the eventual emergence of motherese and, subsequently, protolanguage. The third trend was for an extreme acceleration in brain growth that began prior to the last trimester of gestation and continued through infants' first postnatal year (early "brain spurt"). Conservation of this trend in modern babies explains why human brains reach adult sizes that are over three times those of chimpanzees. The fossil record of hominin cranial capacities together with comparative neuroanatomical data suggest that, around 3 million years ago, early brain spurts began to facilitate an evolutionary trajectory for increasingly large adult brains in association with neurological reorganization. The prehistoric increase in brain size eventually caused parturition to become exceedingly difficult, and this difficulty, known as the "obstetrical dilemma", is likely to constrain the future evolution of brain size and, thus, privilege ongoing evolution in neurological reorganization. In modern babies, the brain spurt is accompanied by formation and tuning (pruning) of neurological connections, and development of dynamic higher-order networks that facilitate acquisition of grammatical language and, later in development, other advanced computational abilities such as musical or mathematical perception and performance. The cumulative evidence suggests that the emergence and refinement of grammatical language was a prime mover of hominin brain evolution.

Increasing User Comfort for Public Seating - User Interaction with Materials

This paper focuses on possibilities in increasing the user comfort of seating furniture in public waiting interiors. There are several aspects helping to achieve the best comfort of sitting, such as appropriate ergonomic design, shape, or material composition. While every of the said aspects have a significant impact on the final comfort, it would be better, or even essential, to adopt a complex view of this issue. One of the complex ways to increase the user comfort is to observe the interaction of the human (the “user”) with the material. The paper describes tactile properties in the interaction with basic types of materials the public gets in direct contact with when sitting in public waiting interiors. The conducted research focuses on tactile properties leading to contact comfort of the most used materials, and analyses the properties in relation to temperature, roughness, hardness and comfort. The four mentioned tactile properties are essential for our goal – an increase in user comfort. The preferred materials were defined according to a preceding terrain survey which explored what materials are most commonly used for present seating furniture. The paper then presents the methodology and results of the research focusing on interaction between the human user and the material. The results of the said research might prove useful for future designing and development of seating furniture which focuses on the user’s sensational balance and calmness, i.e. the optimal comfort.

Correction: Soothing the Threatened Brain: Leveraging Contact Comfort with Emotionally Focused Therapy

In our recent article [1], we did not declare potential competing interests relevant to this work, and there are additional details relating to the funding statement and affiliations. We apologize for these omissions and would like to disclose the following information. The competing interests statement should read: Dr. Susan M. Johnson was a primary developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and is the founding Director of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT). Dr. Paul S. Greenman is an EFT therapist and supervisor. The Funding statement should read: This research was supported in part by the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT), a not-for-profit corporation whose mission includes the scientific evaluation of EFT. The director of the ICEEFT, Dr. Susan M. Johnson, had a role in study design and preparation of the manuscript. Additional funding was provided by a National Institute of Mental Health grant, Award Number R01MH080725, awarded to JAC. No additional external funding received for this study. The NIMH had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The affiliations should have additionally included: Susan M. Johnson International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Exploring the Contact Comfort within Complex Well-Being in Microenvironment

The paper deals with the problematic of contact comfort as a part of body conscious design/ human-centred design. Contact comfort consist of a combination of balanced surface temperature, heat transmission, surface roughness, surface elasticity/hardness, sorption activity of the surface in terms of vapour/fluids absorbance, sorption activity of the surface in terms of absorbing the external moisture (e.g. sweat or humidity of air/its condensates), having control over body position, possibilities of maintenance and visual comfort connected with cultural background of users, individual mental and physical setting that is creating overall feeling of comfort. All these parameters are measurable and it is possible to optimize them with an aim to get good solutions that are providing higher contact comfort.Roughness is extremely important for overall feeling of contact comfort it has direct relation also to the other features. The current paper presents also the methodology and results of the pilot study of contact comfort. .Different wood based materials and wood species with different types of surface finishing in comparison with other materials were investigated by using a test chair.

Soothing the threatened brain: leveraging contact comfort with emotionally focused therapy.

Social relationships are tightly linked to health and well-being. Recent work suggests that social relationships can even serve vital emotion regulation functions by minimizing threat-related neural activity. But relationship distress remains a significant public health problem in North America and elsewhere. A promising approach to helping couples both resolve relationship distress and nurture effective interpersonal functioning is Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), a manualized, empirically supported therapy that is strongly focused on repairing adult attachment bonds. We sought to examine a neural index of social emotion regulation as a potential mediator of the effects of EFT. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of EFT for modifying the social regulation of neural threat responding using an fMRI-based handholding procedure. Results suggest that EFT altered the brain's representation of threat cues in the presence of a romantic partner. EFT-related changes during stranger handholding were also observed, but stranger effects were dependent upon self-reported relationship quality. EFT also appeared to increase threat-related brain activity in regions associated with self-regulation during the no-handholding condition. These findings provide a critical window into the regulatory mechanisms of close relationships in general and EFT in particular.

Gray Synthetic Evaluation on Comfort of Towel Fabrics

People are dissatisfied with quite some towel quality including easy to hardening, fiber loss and poor absorption. To solve the problems, this paper used different towel fabrics to test stiffness, frictional properties, wicking and depilation rate. Then gray analysis method is introduced to evaluate the comprehensive comfort of these towel fabrics. The results show that the contact comfort of Bamboo fiber towel is better than the cotton towel. With the increasing of pile loop, the performance of towels is comfortable.

Dog-Assisted Therapy Programs: Should we Reconsider Current Practices?

There is, today, accumulating evidence suggesting that, when integrated into treatment, dogs can have a positive impact in a wide variety of clinical problems. These include compromised mental functioning [1], communication and language impairments [2], social disabilities [3], emotional difficulties [4], undesirable behaviors [5], and physical problems [6]. Data comes from individual or group studies, implemented in different settings with individuals across the lifespan, including children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly [7]. Within the particular field of physiotherapy, a growing number of studies are showing that a dog used as an adjunct to therapy can motivate patients not only to do exercises they normally aren’t willing to do but also for longer durations, thereby increasing the benefits of the therapeutic process [6]. Research also shows that involving a dog in physical therapy can help improve sensory modulation and sensory interpretation [8]. Moreover, tasks such as having patients taking the animal for a walk, petting and brushing, or playing fetch, carry a motor component, which can increase muscle strength and improves control of motor skills [6]. Importantly is that, as opposed to rote exercises in which patients move by following directions given in spatial terms or by following the therapists’ demonstrations, these tasks present a highly functional utility. Another benefit reported in empirical studies relates to the unique ability of these animals to capture the attention of patients and distract them from the pain associated to some motor activities [9]. Also, dogs can make patients feel more relaxed and less stressed during sessions, either by providing a non-threatening diversion from anxiety-producing tasks or by the so-called contact comfort arising from physical touch [10].

Consolation as possible expression of sympathetic concern among chimpanzees

Chimpanzees are known to spontaneously provide contact comfort to recent victims of aggression, a behavior known as consolation. Similar behavior in human children is attributed to empathic or sympathetic concern. In line with this empathy hypothesis, chimpanzee consolation has been shown to reduce the recipient's state of arousal, hence to likely alleviate distress. Other predictions from the empathy hypothesis have rarely been tested, however, owing to small sample sizes in previous studies. An exceptionally large database of spontaneous consolation in two outdoor-housed groups of chimpanzees lends further support to the empathy hypothesis in that consolation occurred disproportionally between individuals that are socially close (i.e., kin and affiliation partners) and was more typical of females than males, which differences are also known of human empathy. These effects were demonstrated using generalized linear mixed models, which control multiple variables at once. An exception to the above pattern was formed by the highest-ranking males, which frequently offered consolation to victims of aggression, probably as part of their general policing function in chimpanzee society. Consolation occurred more frequently in the absence of reconciliation between former opponents, suggesting that actors are sensitive to the contact need of victims of aggression, which may be greater if the aggressor ignores them. That consolation is an integrated part of close mutual relationships is supported by the tendency for it being reciprocated.