Perceptions of visual and multimodal symbolic mediated social touch: Role of technology modality, relationship, and task emotional salience

• Published in: International journal of human-computer studies Vol. 159; p. 102757
• Main Authors: Yarosh, Svetlana, Wang, Xizi, Yao, Yuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2022
• Subjects: Computer-Mediated Communication; Haptic Interaction; Mediated-Social Touch; Projector-Camera Systems; Shape Memory Alloys; Social Disfordance; Social Presence; Projector-Camera Systems; Mediated-Social Touch; Haptic Interaction; Computer-Mediated Communication; Shape Memory Alloys; Social Presence; Social Disfordance
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102757
• ISSN: 1071-5819

•We investigated how people perceive and respond to affective mediated social touch given the relationship between participants (strangers vs. known partners), the task carried out (high vs. low emotional salience tasks), and the type of mediated communication technology used (videochat vs. duplexed projector-camera workspace vs. duplexed projector-camera workspace augmented with shape-memory alloy haptics bands).•Both mediated social touch technologies outperform videochat on measures of communicational expressiveness and task load.•Augmenting a projector-camera system with haptics increases touch attempts and the diversity of touch gestures attempted between participants.•Taken across tasks and relationships, projector-camera non-haptic mediated social touch performed no worse than such a system augmented with haptics on measures of social discomfort, communicational expressiveness, social presence, and task load.•When looking exclusively at tasks with high-emotional salience, augmenting a projector-camera system with haptics may provide a benefit on measures of task load and communicational expressiveness with known partners.•Measures of social discomfort, need for additional consideration, and social presence may be more sensitive to differences in the communicational context (i.e., relationship, task) than the technologies used, perhaps requiring reconceptualization or reconsideration of the use of these measures in future mediated social touch research. Mediated social touch technologies represent touch across distance as a mechanism for building and reinforcing social relationships. We investigated how people perceive and respond to mediated affective gestures given the relationship between participants (strangers vs. known partners), the task carried out (high vs. low emotional salience tasks), and the modality of mediated communication technology used (videochat vs. projector-camera duplexed workspace vs. projector-camera with shape-memory alloy haptics). Through a between-subjects 3 × 2 × 2 factorial design with 162 participants, we found that generally a projector-camera mediated social touch system without haptics performed no worse than one with haptics on most measures. However, we saw significant interaction effects, suggesting that haptics may offer some benefit for high-emotional salience tasks on measures of expressiveness and task load. We reflect on our findings by providing concrete recommendations on technologies to use, variables to include, and measures to consider for future mediated social touch research.