Data in Brief (Sep 2016)

Data set demonstrating an absence of touch effects on social orienting in adults

  • Christy Reece,
  • Richard Ebstein,
  • Xiaoqin Cheng,
  • Tabitha Ng,
  • Annett Schirmer

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8
pp. 904 – 909

Abstract

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Forty-five women participated in a variant of the social orienting paradigm employed in “Maternal Touch Predicts Attentional Bias Towards Faces in Young Children” (Reece, in press) [1]. On a given trial, they saw a mathematical equation and indicated whether this equation was true or false. Equations were superimposed on face or house distractors. A female experimenter sat next to the participant. In separate blocks, she either rested her hand on the participants arm or refrained from touching. Performance was poorer on trials with face than house distractors. However, experimenter touch failed to modulate this effect. Here we present raw and analyzed data of this companion experiment.