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The Power of Touch in Communication

Touch is the earliest developing sense in fetuses and infants. It is highly developed in infants and other primates like chimpanzees from birth as they rely heavily on the sense of touch to cling to their mothers. Research shows that infants who can perceive touch, even without other senses, tend to develop better than those without a sense of touch. Studies on rhesus monkeys also found they preferred the comfort of a soft surrogate mother over just a feeding apparatus, showing the importance of touch and warmth for well-being. Touch allows for different sensations and is a fundamental part of haptic communication, both conveying physical intimacy and categorizing relationships from sexual to platonic to abusive.

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Cynea Arquisola
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70 views1 page

The Power of Touch in Communication

Touch is the earliest developing sense in fetuses and infants. It is highly developed in infants and other primates like chimpanzees from birth as they rely heavily on the sense of touch to cling to their mothers. Research shows that infants who can perceive touch, even without other senses, tend to develop better than those without a sense of touch. Studies on rhesus monkeys also found they preferred the comfort of a soft surrogate mother over just a feeding apparatus, showing the importance of touch and warmth for well-being. Touch allows for different sensations and is a fundamental part of haptic communication, both conveying physical intimacy and categorizing relationships from sexual to platonic to abusive.

Uploaded by

Cynea Arquisola
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Haptic communication 

is a branch of nonverbal communication that refers to the ways in which


people and animals communicate and interact via the sense of touch. Touch is the most
sophisticated and intimate of the five senses.[1] Touch or haptics, from the ancient Greek
word haptikos is extremely important for communication; it is vital for survival.[2]
Touch is the earliest sense to develop in the fetus.[3] The development of an infant's haptic senses
and how it relates to the development of the other senses such as vision has been the target of
much research. Human babies have been observed to have enormous difficulty surviving if they do
not possess a sense of touch, even if they retain sight and hearing.[4] Infants who can perceive
through touch, even without sight and hearing, tend to fare much better.[5]
Similarly to infants, in chimpanzees the sense of touch is highly developed. As newborns they see
and hear poorly but cling strongly to their mothers. Harry Harlow conducted a controversial study
involving rhesus monkeys and observed that monkeys reared with a "terry cloth mother", a wire
feeding apparatus wrapped in softer terry cloth which provided a level of tactile stimulation and
comfort, were considerably more emotionally stable as adults than those with a mere wire mother.
For his experiment, he presented the infants with a clothed surrogate mother and a wire surrogate
mother which held a bottle with food. It turns out that the rhesus monkeys spent most of their time
with the terry cloth mother, over the wire surrogate with a bottle of food, which indicates that they
preferred touch, warmth, and comfort over sustenance.[6]
Touch can come in many different forms, some can promote physical and psychological well-being.
A warm, loving touch can lead to positive outcomes while a violent touch can ultimately lead to a
negative outcome. The sense of touch allows one to experience different sensations such as:
pleasure, pain, heat, or cold. One of the most significant aspects of touch is the ability to convey and
enhance physical intimacy.[7] The sense of touch is the fundamental component of haptic
communication for interpersonal relationships. Touch can be categorized in many terms such as
positive, playful, control, ritualistic, task-related or unintentional. It can be both sexual (kissing is one
example that some perceived as sexual), and platonic (such as hugging or a handshake). Striking,
pushing, pulling, pinching, kicking, strangling and hand-to-hand fighting are forms of touch in the
context of physical abuse.

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