See You, Feel Me: Watching Tactile Events on an Actor's Body Modifies Subjective Sensation of Tactile Events on One's Own Body

Abstract

In recent work Thomas et al (under review) examined the subjective effects of action observation on sensory perception. They found that when we watch the actions of an actor, subjective sensory experience is enhanced at the equivalent location on the subject's body. In the present study we looked at whether this sensory transfer might also occur for more specific sensations such as roughness/unpleasantness and softness/pleasantness. We found that when participants watched another person being stroked with a soft/pleasant object (eg, velvet), their sensation of pleasantness was increased when they were simultaneously stimulated with more pleasant (ie,, higher frequency) stimuli on the corresponding area of their own body. We concluded that seeing a person being touched with stimuli perceived as pleasant or unpleasant amplifies judgements about stimuli when they are presented to the same body location on another person, and therefore suggests a cross modal interaction between vision and touch. This mechanism might allow transfer of affective dimensions of touch, a mechanism we suggest could impact on the nature of advertising and influence how organisations produce and market their products.