Physical Touch Research Articles

To touch or not to touch: evaluating student laboratory outcomes of hands‐on versus visual examination of prosected cadavers

Introduction/ObjectiveDrawing, observational activities, and touch have been shown to enhance the learning process of three‐dimensional structure in anatomy (Reid et al., 2019). However, the impact of observational activities and touch on learning outcomes specific to cadaver specimens has not been reported. We hypothesized that physical touch of prosected, cadaveric donors would lead to improved knowledge of human structure and higher scores on laboratory practicals. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the differences in learning outcomes by comparing laboratory practical grades of students who physically touched or did not physically touch cadaveric donors.Materials/MethodsWe incorporated prosected cadaver specimens in two undergraduate, pre‐professional and pre‐Health Sciences anatomy courses in an effort to enhance student learning. The physical manipulation of cadaveric donors by students enrolled in BIO 201, Human Anatomy (majors), and BIO 221, Human Anatomy and Physiology (non‐majors) was tracked to determine if manipulation of the cadavers improves laboratory assessment outcomes. Students (n=176) from the courses across seven semesters were assigned as those who ‘manipulated’ (n=100) or ‘did not manipulate’ (n=76) the donors. Data was tallied and compared to performance on laboratory practical assessments. A Fisher’s exact test was conducted within individual course and combined course populations to assess if the relationship between physically touching a cadaver and receiving a passing grade on lab practical assessments is more than expected by chance.ResultsOverall, students who manipulated cadaveric donors were more successful in the laboratory component of Anatomy courses than those who ‘did not manipulate.’ BIO 201 students who actively touched the cadaver during laboratory sessions received a “C” or better (n=58 vs 6 DFW) on lab practical assessments. In contrast, the majority of students who did not touch the cadaver earned a DFW (n=33 vs 18 C or better) (P <0.0001). Similar outcomes were identified for BIO 221 students; the 34 students who actively touched the cadaver during lab sessions received a “C” or better vs non‐passing, DFW grades (n=2). However, ‘non‐manipulating’ BIO 221 students were able to earn outcomes of “C” or better (n=13) as compared to non‐passing grades (DFW, n=12). Despite this, statistically, students were more likely to receive a passing grade for the laboratory assessments with a “C” or better when actively involved in cadaver‐based learning (P=0.0002). The student data was also analyzed as a single cohort, providing additional statistical evidence that students who used the cadavers were more likely to earn a higher grade for the laboratory component of the course (n=92 with a “C” or better vs 8 DFW) than students who did not use the cadavers (n=32 with a “C” or better vs 44 DFW) (P <0.0001). Our data indicates that a student is 7.24 times more likely to earn a “DFW” on lab practical assessments in anatomy‐based courses when they do not touch the cadaver.SignificanceThese data suggest students enrolled in anatomy courses with cadaveric donors will have improved lab assessment outcomes if they physically touch the donors.ConclusionIt is imperative that anatomy faculty recognize that exposure to cadaveric donors may impact the overall learning experience, as students are better prepared for identification‐based practical assessments when they are encouraged to touch, handle, and manipulate anatomical structures.

Perinatal Care of Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors: Scoping Review.

An estimated one in nine women seeking perinatal care is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), yet CSA may be unknown to nurses and other health care providers. Childhood sexual abuse can have adverse physical and psychological effects for survivors, and the intimacy of perinatal care can trigger distress like intrusive thoughts. To explore available literature about CSA survivors and perinatal care. Specific aims were to 1) identify nursing actions that ease undesirable feelings during perinatal care for CSA survivors and 2) identify gaps in the literature on perinatal care for CSA survivors. Following the PRISMA-ScR Checklist, MEDLINE and CINAHL databases were searched using: "Child Abuse, Sexual," "Perinatal Care," and "Parturition." Initial yield was 109 records. Applying inclusion and exclusion criteria produced 14 full-text articles. Findings suggest that obtaining consent, promoting safety, trust, and control, fostering a healthy nurse-patient relationship, and inquiring about abuse may improve how CSA survivors experience perinatal care. Gaps in literature include nursing assessments for history of CSA with nonverbal cues. For all patients, nurses should foster security and trust. It is critical that CSA survivors be in control of their care. Procedures should be thoroughly explained, and most importantly, consent should be obtained prior to every physical touch. Nurses must ask about history of CSA because it is part of patient-centered care, which is central to nursing.

Hand Washing Let’s Clean Together, Hand Washing Movement With Soap With SDIT Rabbani Tolitoli Students

Clean and healthy behavior is an effort made to improve the degree of public health. One of the clean and healthy behavior is to get used to washing hands with soap. Various activities carried out, not apart from the role of the hands such as making physical contact, touching eyes, nose, and mouth, holding objects around, including contact with animals are the source of various types of germs that cause disease. Washing hands with soap is one of the effective steps in preventing the transmission of disease. However, washing hands with soap the often ignored by the community, including children in the school environment. The targets of these activities are students of Sekolah Dasar Islam Terpadu (SDIT) Rabbani Tolitoli. The method in this activity is in the form of counseling hand washing with soap, watching animated videos about disease prevention, practicing firsthand how to wash hands using soap as recommended by WHO, and distributing hand washing soap as a gift so that school-age children are motivated to get used to washing hands with soap. Before this activity, SDIT Rabbani students have not received proper education on how to wash their hands, so the activities carried out can be realized and succeeded because all students can practice washing hands with soap properly and correctly. This activity received positive responses from the school principal, teachers and students of SDIT Rabbani Tolitoli.

Physiotherapists’ Perspectives on the use of Telehealth for Service Delivery to Children with Developmental Delays: A Qualitative Focus Group Study

Purpose: The purposes of the study are to (1) determine what barriers and facilitators physiotherapists perceive to using telehealth, (2) to determine willingness to use and (3) to determine perspectives on training in the use of telehealth. Method: This is a qualitative semi structured interview and focus group design. Participants were recruited from the first stage of the larger research process using purposive sampling. A semi structured guide was used to facilitate discussion of shared experiences and to allow themes to emerge from the discussion. Results: Thematic analysis was used to synthesise frequent and important themes. Ten participants took part in either a focus group (n=7) or interview (n=3). Nine main themes identified were split into barriers and facilitators. Facilitators were the right family, right child, adequate technology and space, and collaboration. Barriers were technology, time management, lack of physical touch, lack of organisational support, and work environment. Conclusion: Results suggest that physiotherapists working with children with developmental delay consider telehealth to be unsuitable to replace face-to-face therapy entirely but are willing to use it to provide follow up services to the right family and the right child. Physiotherapists in the study were positive about telehealth’s potential to improve services to children in rural areas. Physiotherapists said that specific physiotherapy training in telehealth was currently lacking.

Kawaii emotions in presentations: Viewing a physical touch affects perception of affiliative feelings of others toward an object.

We investigated how a presenter’s touching behaviors of an object during its explanation affect the observer’s perceived feelings of kawaii, a Japanese word that means “cute,” toward the object and the presenter. We conducted a face-to-face experiment with a robot presenter as well as a web survey experiment with both robot and human presenters. Based on the phenomenon that people more firmly touch an object when their perceived kawaii feeling is overwhelmingly strong, we investigated the effects of touching behavior with emphasized styles. First, we conducted a face-to-face experiment with a robot presenter where participants observed their presentations about an object to explain its characteristics. The results showed that participants who observed the robot’s touch behaviors perceived the object to be more kawaii and thought that the robot also felt the object was more kawaii. On the other hand, the results did not effectively show any increase in the participant’s feelings of kawaii toward the robot or the emphasized touch style. Based on these results, we next conducted a web survey experiment to investigate whether such knowledge about touching effects is applicable for human presenters. The results resembled those obtained when the presenter was a robot, i.e., viewing a touch behavior increased both the presenter’s perceived feelings of kawaii toward the object and the participant’s feelings of kawaii toward it. These results suggest that viewing the touch behaviors of others influenced the perceived emotional feelings toward both presenters and objects.

Understanding the Effect of Speed on Human Emotion Perception in Mediated Social Touch Using Voice Coil Actuators

Touch as a modality in social communication has been getting more attention with recent developments in wearable technology and an increase in awareness of how limited physical contact can lead to touch starvation and feelings of depression. Although several mediated touch methods have been developed for conveying emotional support, the transfer of emotion through mediated touch has not been widely studied. This work addresses this need by exploring emotional communication through a novel wearable haptic system. The system records physical touch patterns through an array of force sensors, processes the recordings using novel gesture-based algorithms to create actuator control signals, and generates mediated social touch through an array of voice coil actuators. We conducted a human subject study (N= 20) to understand the perception and emotional components of this mediated social touch for common social touch gestures, including poking, patting, massaging, squeezing, and stroking. Our results show that the speed of the virtual gesture significantly alters the participants' ratings of valence, arousal, realism, and comfort of these gestures with increased speed producing negative emotions and decreased realism. The findings from the study will allow us to better recognize generic patterns from human mediated touch perception and determine how mediated social touch can be used to convey emotion. Our system design, signal processing methods, and results can provide guidance in future mediated social touch design.

Telemental Health

Telemental Health

The Love Languages of Generation Z in Philippine School Doha: Basis for Designing the Student Development Program

Understanding and loving the Generation Z can bridge the gap of miscommunication between them and their loved ones. Since everyone feels love differently, it is vital to know what generation Z? expectations are different from the others. The objective of this study is to determine the types of love languages of the generation Z. Specifically, this research aims to investigate the level of the respondents? love languages in terms of: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. The study utilized the quantitative descriptive design of research. Data collection strategy was gathered through survey questionnaires. The population of this study consists of the Generation Z. Respondents were selected using the stratified random sampling method. Frequency, percentage, and weighted mean were used to analyze the data in this study. Based on the results of the study, generation Z feel loved whenever words of affirmation are spoken to them, acts of service are rendered for them, gifts are given to them, quality time is devoted to them, and physical touches are shown to them. Results shows that among the five love languages, the Words of affirmation got the first rank. Generation Z always feel loved whenever positive words and phrases are spoken to them. It is followed by Quality time, Acts of service, Receiving of gifts and the last on the rank of love language is Physical Touch. It is highly recommended that Generation Z should be shown love through words of affirmation, acts of service, gift giving, quality time and physical touch. Specific attention to the primary type of love language should be given consideration, to lay the foundation for better understanding the perspectives and behaviors of generation Z.

Freyja–A life vest in damaging isolation, since physical touch is crucial for life

Freyja–A life vest in damaging isolation, since physical touch is crucial for life

Cultural Shifting And Non-Verbal Communication Reconstruction In Covid-19 Outbreak: Indonesia’S Insight

COVID 19 has had a multidisciplinary impact on health, economic, and socio-political emergencies. In the context of communal culture, the impact is increasingly felt. Various activities that prioritize collectivity become limited and even eliminated. In general, communal people used to handle certain messages with physical touch. During the pandemic, conversely, non-verbal activity are in a shifting mode. Therefore, this research attempt to identifies interaction patterns changes in collective society addressing the new habit in non-verbal communication perspectives. This research uses literature studies on journals, previous studies, and other textual documents that are relevant to the research objectives. The analysis results were discussed by the Birdwhistell kinesics theory and Hall's proxemics theory. The research obtained the discussion about non-verbal communication patterns shifting from the haptic tradition to mediated communication. Furthermore, the discussion also apply to physical distance in space and time theory outlook. Therefore, in collective society, the changes will not only generate a new culture but also deliver the way of thinking shifting. The communication barriers presence in indexical signs use then likely happened. Further research could emphasize on macro levels in language relativity perspective. The use of positivistic paradigms to explain correlations between population characteristics and changes in communication behavior patterns during a pandemic can also be explored.

Historical Trauma, Queer Sex, and Physical Touch in Barbara Hammer’s Nitrate Kisses

For lesbian-feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer, “making up” lost queer history in the absence of conventional archives is a material and embodied process seen in her experimental documentary Nitrate Kisses (1992). This film centres around different queer couples portraying various erotic, physical and sexual acts. Each of these acts are aligned with voice-over interviews and visual archival ephemera detailing particular historical traumas, including the AIDS crisis and the erasure of lesbian experiences from life narratives of Holocaust survivors. I argue that the body and various erotic acts in Nitrate Kisses become sites of consciousness and cognition employed in the recovery of traumatic memory. As I explore, it is physical touch—sexual and erotic touch in particular—that acts as a conduit for accessing lost or purposefully invisibilized archival knowledge. Employing Elizabeth Freeman’s erotohistoriography, I argue that sex and other forms of physical touch in Hammer’s film become a method of remembering historical injustices, making them visible through an embodied queer-feminist archival practice in order for the viewer to bear witness to trauma that has shaped queer cultural memory.
 This article contains images of nudity and sexual behaviour.

Touching through Music, Touching through Words

This article investigates the versatile embodiment of touch in the sensory-aesthetic construction of piano performance. The sensorial interactions enmeshed in piano playing distribute a peculiar interaction between touch and sound, which can be comprehended as two kinds of pianistic touch – the physical touch and the affective touch. In the synthesis, or symbiosis, of these two kinds of touch, piano performance epitomizes a sensory-aesthetic continuum to transmit its force beyond perceptible spatial-temporal boundaries. This article argues that the tactile-sonic relationship in piano playing manifests the performative power of music to formulate new modes of feeling and understanding. This argument is explored in three stages. The first stage utilises two treatises, Steven Connor's ‘Edison's teeth’ (2001) and Simon Waters’ ‘Touching at a distance’ (2013), to explicate how touch enables the production of musical sound and how music can be received as tactually oriented sensations. The second stage introduces the piano as an exemplary instrument of touch in the contexts of scientific studies and relevant cultural history. The third stage uses two novelistic texts as heuristics to explore how pianistic touch is enacted performatively to engage with the aural, visual, somatic and visceral sensations. Both Thomas Mann's ‘Tristan’ (2009 [1903]) and Forster's A Room with a View (2012 [1908]) testify to how fictional presentations of piano playing can provide fertile loam to reappraising pianistic touch beyond the ordinary musical context. Overall, as performed in a range of pianistic settings, the multivariant senses of touch provide productive perspectives for re-constructing what prior categories of senses and sensations could not consider. This article will thus be conducive to a quest for new forms of creativity underlying the performance and performativity of pianistic touch.

Preference of English Language Education Students of Learning Styles

Students bring their own unique characteristics during the learning process in the class. They have different ways of following the learning process itself. This way can be called preference or style. They will use the style that matches and help them in comprehending the learning material during the learning process. There is known that students' learning styles are divided into many kinds according to some experts. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the prominent styles of EFL students using VARK Model by Neil Fleming. To gather the data, the study used a descriptive study with a survey. The participant in this study come from 20 English Language Education of Ganesha University students from the 7th semester. This study revealed that the prominent of students' learning preferences came from Multimodal style which were the combination between reading/write (R) and kinestheticstyle learners. Students who are learning with a read/write style like to demand information in the form of words or text. They like to read and taking notes while learning. Some visual-real aids like graphs, diagrams, etc., helped them a lot while learning. Meanwhile, for students with kinesthetic learning style, they tend to have a hands-on interaction for it is essential to them. The greatest ways for kinesthetic learners to learn is they like to directly do a physical touch while learning and like doing some authentic activity like practical exercises, trial and error activities, and solving some case studies.

Early postnatal handling alters social behavior, learning, and memory of pre- and postnatal VPA-induced rat models of autism in a context-based manner

Early life events are known to greatly affect brain development, cortical neurogenesis, and Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activity. Mainly characterized by impairment in social communication, language, and cognitive development, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a class of neuropsychiatric disorders with numerous genetic and environmental risk factors. In the early handling (EH) method, daily separation of infants from their mother, physical touching, and exposure to a new environment occur. Here, we studied the effect of EH on Social interaction, learning, and memory in rats exposed pre-or post-natally to valproic acid (VPA). Gestational VPA exposure (600 mg/kg) led to some severe autistic-like traits, more notable in the social behavior of the male sex, along with unchanged to partially altered spatial learning and memory function and reduced avoidance memory. In comparison, while causing a sex-dependent increase in spatial memory, subcutaneous injection of VPA (400 mg/kg) in infancy resulted in limited adverse autistic features, including a decrease in males’ social preference, as well as reduced avoidance memory. The results indicated that neonatal handling significantly improved multiple social behavior and memory deficits in prenatally injected rats. In contrast, EH in rats receiving postnatal VPA elicited a restricted advantage on social novelty tendency; while negatively affecting some other social behavior criteria and spatial learning of males and encouraging sex-dependent repetitive behaviors in the social setting. The controversial influence of postnatal handling on juvenile rats of postnatal VPA treatment vs. prenatal VPA treatment opens up the potential for future research on the context-based consequence of early-life handling stress using different behavioral tasks and to benefit therapeutic procedures through understanding the sex- and age-specific neurobiology of short-term environmental manipulation in animal models of autism.

‘Losing the illusion of control and predictability of life’: experiences of grief and loss among ageing US adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

AbstractBereavement and grief are frequently experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic given widespread mortality. However, losses extend beyond deaths to include cancelled plans and routines, separation from family and friends, and unemployment. It is essential to better understand the multifaceted and complex losses experienced by older adults throughout the pandemic. We analysed 2,587 open-ended survey responses collected online in May to July 2020 from the COVID-19 Coping Study, a mixed-methods study of US adults aged 55 and older. Participants were on average 67 years old (standard deviation = 7.2), over two-thirds female and largely white. Qualitative thematic analysis identified diverse sources of grief, sadness and loss. Themes ranged from death and bereavement to anticipatory grief, loss of agency, cancelled plans and missed milestones, losing social contact and physical touch, health struggles, loss of normalcy and daily routines, and societal and economic woes. The results highlight the varied and highly personal nature of everyday grief and loss among ageing adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sources of grief extended beyond death to include both tangible and intangible losses with expectations of long-term consequences. These findings may inform the development of family and community supports, including mental health services, to address complex subjective experiences of grief and loss since the pandemic onset. Interventions are needed to support healing and hope in vulnerable and resilient ageing populations.

Affective Experience and Regulation via Sleep, Touch, and "Sleep-Touch" Among Couples.

Touch associated with sleep (sleep-touch; reported physical contact during or shortly before/after sleep) is underexplored as a distinct contributor to affect regulatory processes associated with adult sleep. Given the affect-regulating effects of interpersonal touch, we theorized that among healthy co-sleeping adults, sleep-touch would add to sleep-related effects on affective "resetting," resulting in the experience of calmer, more regulated states. We studied 210 married heterosexual couples (aged 20-67years, 79% non-Hispanic white, 13% Latinx) assigned 14days of twice-daily (morning/evening) sleep/mood diaries. Multilevel daily (within-couple) mediation analyses showed that as hypothesized, more reported sleep-touch was associated with happier/calmer and less angry/irritable morning mood. In turn, happier/calmer mood was associated with greater enjoyment of time with spouse (for both spouses). Sleep-touch also was linked directly to both evening positive spousal events and enjoyment ratings. Sleep-touch was associated indirectly with fewer negative spousal events and less spouse-related stress via less angry/irritable morning mood (both spouses). Further, wives' sleep-touch was related to happier/calmer husband mood and evening enjoyment; husbands' sleep-touch was unrelated to wives' reports. All associations with sleep-touch were present while accounting for subjective sleep quality, prior evening mood, non-sleep-related physical affection, day in study, and weekend versus weekday. We speculate that among relatively healthy satisfied couples, physical touch during and surrounding sleep may add to sleep's restorative and affect-regulatory functions, suggesting a pathway through which co-sleeping can improve affect regulation and ultimately relationships and health.

Displaying intergenerational solidarity on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic: understanding the implications in the grandparent-grandchild relationship

ABSTRACT The habits of families are affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, with limitations to socialization or visits. Grandparents and grandchildren use social media to sustain interpersonal relationships, as well as display intergenerational solidarity to others. This paper presents a qualitative content analysis of the display of different dimensions of intergenerational solidarity between grandparents and grandchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, on TikTok. The analysis extends the understanding of intergenerational solidarity between grandparents and grandchildren on TikTok, by highlighting which characteristics or activities they find important to display to other users of the platform. The results suggest that grandparents and grandchildren value qualities of physical touch and family celebrations (i.e. affectual solidarity), and big life events (i.e. normative solidarity). Moreover, grandparents and grandchildren refrain from consensual solidarity on TikTok, but other categories of intergenerational solidarity provide clues to differences in the public display of their respective roles.

KONSEP NUSYUZ MENURUT SYEKH NAWAWI AL-BANTANI DAN MUHAMMAD SYAHRUR

This study examines the public’s lack of understanding of the NUSYUZ concept, which still means discrimination against one gender only. Scholars also interpret it not only to punish one party. However, there are still many who understand that NUSYUZ is an act of a wife who disobeys her husband, it could also be a husband who is NUSYUZ against his wife, and here the author wants to examine the lack of understanding of NUSYUZ which is still discrimination from gender issues. The purpose of this study is to eliminate gender discrimination from the concept of NUSYUZ that exists in the wider community, there are none other than wives who are NUSYUZ against their husbands and husbands who are NUSYUZ against their wives. In this study using the Library Research method or library research, by reading and dissecting books and previous studies in order to find the problem of gender deviations that occur in the NUSYUZ concept. The results of this study state that the concept of Nusyuz according to Sheikh Nawawi Al-Bantani that it is permissible to reprimand with physical touch as long as it does not cause injury, Muhammad Syahrur’s concept makes women honor. While the content discussed is gender equality and eliminating discrimination against men and women, the benefits resulting from the loss of discrimination make everyone bear the same burden between the relationships of men and women who are already married.

Degendering Male Nursing Students’ Intimate Care Provision: A South African Perspective

Background: Male nursing students remain a minority group in nursing education and training programmes. They are thought to have diverted from their prescribed roles as men, leading to professional stereotypes and fear of providing intimate care. In addition, the lack of role models and support for male nurses adds to their frustration during clinical placement. The aim of this study was thus to understand male nursing students’ experiences when providing intimate care to diverse patients during clinical placement. Methods: A descriptive phenomenology design was employed. Male nursing students from two nursing education institutions in Gauteng province, South Africa, were purposively sampled based on their experiences and their exposure to providing basic nursing care requiring physical closeness and touch. Twelve (12) male nursing students participated in individual semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using phenomenological analysis of horizontalisation, creating meaning and essence of intimate care experiences. Results: Four themes emerged from intimate care experiences, which were (1) helping others with basic physical care; (2) cultural issues related to touching naked bodies of diverse patients; (3) adherence to basic nursing care principles; and (4) discomforting reactions during intimate care and touch. Conclusions: Male nursing students are willing to provide quality care to diverse patients. However, some do not accept intimate care and touch based on gender. For male nursing students to be competent in caring for patients, they must be able to provide intimate care to diverse patients confidently and comfortably. Thus, degendering intimate care provision is essential for male nursing students—to provide care without fear of being stereotyped and misinterpreted as sexual predators. Instead, they must be accepted as nurses who are helping patients with their physical needs.

Design and Implementation of a Touchless Hand Sanitizer Dispenser Mobile Robot

Two years ago, coronavirus COVID-19 spread all over the world. This virus causes the death of many people. The main problem is the way to maintain healthy hand wash in the circumstance of physical touch to the bottle that causes infection. The purpose of this paper is to design and implement a movable touchless hand sanitizer dispenser mobile robot that identifies the human body by processing the images taken from the camera to estimate the distance between the mobile robot and the human. A microcontroller board which is used to control four DC motors. The all design shows better activity than the usual and manual fixed touchless hand sanitizer design because the movable one can move with an acceptable error to the patient or a healthy person anywhere, he found. People can be protected from any virus or germs by using this proposed design. The main contribution of this work that our design system is useful in Anti-Covid-19 application and the total method has been collected the use of image processing, mobile robot, sensor hardware design, and the overall algorithm that control the application work.