de Lagarde Alexandra, Pelachaud Catherine, Kirsch Louise P, Auvray Malika
Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique, Paris F-75005, France.
Humans Matter, Paris F-75019, France.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 May 13;122(19):e2407614122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2407614122. Epub 2025 May 6.
Social touch is crucial for human well-being, as a lack of tactile interactions increases anxiety, loneliness, and need for social support. To address the detrimental effects of social isolation, we build on cutting-edge research on social touch and movement sonification to investigate whether social tactile gestures could be recognized through sounds, a sensory channel giving access to remote information. Four online experiments investigated participants' perception of auditory stimuli that were recorded with our "audio-touch" sonification technique, which captures the sounds of touch. In the first experiment, participants correctly categorized sonified skin-on-skin tactile gestures (i.e., stroking, rubbing, tapping, hitting). In the second experiment, the audio-touch sample consisted of the sonification of six socio-emotional intentions conveyed through touch (i.e., anger, attention, fear, joy, love, sympathy). Participants categorized above chance the socio-emotional intentions of skin-on-skin touches converted into sounds and coherently rated their valence. In two additional experiments, the surface involved in the touches (either skin or plastic) was shown to influence participants' recognition of sonified gestures and socio-emotional intentions. Thus, our research unveils that specific information about social touch (i.e., gesture, emotions, and surface) can be recognized through sounds, when they are obtained with our specific sonifying methodology. This shows significant promise for providing remote access, through the auditory channel, to meaningful social touch interactions.
社交触摸对人类福祉至关重要，因为缺乏触觉互动会增加焦虑、孤独感以及对社会支持的需求。为了应对社会隔离的有害影响，我们基于对社交触摸和运动声音化的前沿研究，来探究社交触觉手势是否可以通过声音被识别，声音是一种能够获取远程信息的感官通道。四项在线实验研究了参与者对通过我们的“音频触摸”声音化技术录制的听觉刺激的感知，该技术能够捕捉触摸的声音。在第一个实验中，参与者能够正确地对皮肤与皮肤之间触觉手势的声音化进行分类（即抚摸、摩擦、轻拍、击打）。在第二个实验中，音频触摸样本包括通过触摸传达的六种社会情感意图的声音化（即愤怒、关注、恐惧、喜悦、爱、同情）。参与者对转化为声音的皮肤与皮肤之间触摸的社会情感意图的分类准确率高于随机水平，并连贯地对其效价进行了评分。在另外两个实验中，触摸所涉及的表面（皮肤或塑料）被证明会影响参与者对声音化手势和社会情感意图的识别。因此，我们的研究表明，当通过我们特定的声音化方法获取时，关于社交触摸的特定信息（即手势、情感和表面）可以通过声音被识别。这对于通过听觉通道提供对有意义的社交触摸互动的远程访问显示出巨大的前景。
