It has been demonstrated that nurturing and affiliative touch is essential for human emotional and physical well-being throughout our entire life. Within the last 30 years a system of low-threshold mechanosensitive C fibers innervating the hairy skin was discovered and described; this system is hypothesized to represent the neurobiological substrate for the affective and rewarding properties of touch. This discovery opens new perspectives for multidisciplinary research of the role of affiliative social touch in health and disease, and calls for establishing novel psychometric tools assessing individual differences in the domain of affective touch. The main objective of the study was to construct and validate a Russian version of the Touch Experiences and Attitudes Questionnaire (TEAQ), a self-report measure recently developed to quantify individual experience and attitude to social and affective touch. A pool of 117 items was translated into Russian and all the items were assessed for appropriateness for Russian culture (232 participants). After exploring the factor structure (468 participants), we composed a 37-item questionnaire (TEAQ-37 Rus) characterized by good reliability and a clear 5-factor structure, covering the aspects of attitude to intimate touch, attitude to friendly touch, attitude to self-care, current intimate touch experiences, and childhood touch experiences. Confirmatory factor analysis (551 participants) has demonstrated good consistency and reliability of the 5-factor structure of the TEAQ-37 Rus. Cross-validation research demonstrated moderate positive correlations between predisposition to social touch and emotional intelligence; positive correlations with extraversion and openness facets of the Big Five personality model were also found. As predicted, participants with higher TEAQ-37 Rus scores rated all observed kinds of touch as more pleasant, with a particular preference for slow touch. We anticipate that this questionnaire will be a valuable tool for researchers of social touch, touch perception abnormalities, and the importance of touch experiences for emotional and mental health.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292699 | PMC |
| http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206905 | PLOS |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Sensory experience controls dendritic structure and behavior by distinct pathways involving degenerins.
Elife
January 2025
Department of Biology, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Dendrites are crucial for receiving information into neurons. Sensory experience affects the structure of these tree-like neurites, which, it is assumed, modifies neuronal function, yet the evidence is scarce, and the mechanisms are unknown. To study whether sensory experience affects dendritic morphology, we use the arborized nociceptor PVD neurons, under natural mechanical stimulation induced by physical contacts between individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEffectiveness of a comic book intervention on mental health literacy among adolescents and youth in Burkina Faso: a randomized controlled trial protocol.
BMC Public Health
January 2025
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (Campus Charité Mitte), Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Background: In Burkina Faso, nearly half of the population is under 15 years old, and one in four adolescents experience depression. This underscores the critical need to enhance mental health literacy among adolescents and youth, empowering them to manage their mental well-being effectively. Comic books offer an engaging approach to health education, yet their effectiveness in addressing mental health remains largely untested.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople often associate roughness with difficulty, as a figure of speech. Studies have shown that there is a metaphorical connection between the concept of rough versus smooth feel and the degree of difficulty. However, it has not been determined whether rough and smooth tactile experiences influence judgments of perceived task difficulty from the perspective of physical metaphors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParents' perspective on unplanned return visits to the pediatric emergency department: A cross-sectional study.
Int Emerg Nurs
January 2025
University of Health Sciences, Gulhane Faculty of Nursing, Department of Pediatric Nursing, Ankara, Turkey. Electronic address:
Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the factors leading to more than one time visit to the pediatric emergency department within 72 h, parental wishes and experiences with emergency nurses from the parents' perspective.
Material And Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between April 15, 2023 and April 14, 2024 with 596 parents of children aged between 0 and 18 years who had return visits to the pediatric emergency department of a gynaecology and pediatrics hospital in the Western Black Sea Region of Türkiye within 72 h after the first visit. Following the acquisition of written informed consent from the parents, the data were collected using the Descriptive Characteristics of Children and Experiences of Parents Information Form.
Background: Pain is a common symptom in people with dementia living in nursing homes, but cognitive impairment, including language and communication difficulties, challenges pain assessment and the ability to self-report pain.
Objectives: This study aimed to identify and summarize patterns, advances, and gaps in research literature describing pain assessment in people with dementia living in nursing homes.
Design: We conducted a scoping review following Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework.
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!