The validated touch-video database

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding visual perception of touch is complex. Recent research has honed in on vicarious sensory perception—sensations triggered by watching touch or pain in others. Factors like arousal, threat, and touch type appear to influence these experiences. However, the absence of standardised visual touch stimuli restricts in-depth analysis. Addressing this, we introduce the Validated Touch-Video Database (VTD), which features 90 videos of touch to a single left hand from a first-person perspective that varies in arousal, threat, hedonic qualities, touch type, and touch agent (object versus human). The database was validated in 350 participants (283 women, 66 men, 1 non-binary), who categorised the touch in each video as ‘neutral’, ‘pleasant’, ‘unpleasant’, or ‘painful’, and provided arousal and threat ratings. Using different methods to check for consistency, we found high agreement between participants in their ratings, highlighting the reliability of the validation data. Our findings indicate that the videos were effective in depicting touch with different hedonic qualities, with differences in how threatening or arousing each type of touch appeared. For example, videos showing painful touch had the highest arousal and threat ratings. On the other hand, neutral touch had very low ratings for both aspects, setting a helpful baseline when comparing more emotionally charged touch types. Women were more likely than men to rate touches as ‘threatening’ or ‘painful’, highlighting the need to consider gender differences when looking at perceptions and reactions to tactile sensory cues. The VTD is relevant for research ranging from understanding our reactions when witnessing others being touched, to the interaction of visual cues with other touch-related sensory data, or decoding neural representations of different touch types. It may also be useful in examining typical and atypical self-other perception, such as that seen in depersonalisation disorder and conditions on the autism spectrum. The inclusion of pleasant touch stimuli broadens the scope of research, offering potential applications in therapy and virtual domains. The VTD, including the validation data, is freely available online for other researchers, providing a systematic resource for researchers exploring touch observation.