Affective touch experiences across the lifespan: Development of the Tactile Biography questionnaire and the mediating role of attachment style

Abstract

The sense of touch develops early in life and becomes a determinant aspect of our personal narratives, providing crucial information about the world around us and playing a prominent role in affective and social interactions. In this study we aimed to explore whether individual differences in touch experiences across the lifespan are related to adult attachment styles and to perceived touch deprivation. For this we first developed an instrument, namely the Tactile Biography, to quantify individual differences in affective touch experiences throughout life. Secondly, we performed a set of regressions models and a mediation analysis to investigate the role of attachment in relation to both the tactile history and perceived touch deprivation. We found that experiences of affective touch during childhood and adolescence seem to be closely associated with adult attachment styles and adult social touch experiences. Avoidant attachment appears to serve as a mediator in the relationship between earlier (childhood/adolescent) and later (adult) affective touch experiences, as well as between earlier affective touch experiences and perceived touch deprivation. These findings offer further support to existing literature, providing novel insights for the fields of social affective touch and attachment research.

Fig 1. Mediation models.

a. Model of childhood/adolescent touch as predictor of current touch exposure, mediated by attachment-related avoidance. b. Model of childhood/adolescent touch as predictor of adult touch experience, mediated by attachment-related avoidance. Dotted arrows represent total effect of predictor on outcome when other variables are not included in the model. Confidence intervals reported for the indirect effect are bootstrapped based on 5000 samples.

Fig 2. Attachment and touch exposure upon reporting of negative experiences in TBIO.

Significant differences in attachment and touch attitudes in participants with and without past negative experiences regarding interpersonal touch. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. * p < .05, ** p < .001.