Modulation of the post-auricular reflex in response to social and CT-optimal touch

Abstract

The pleasantness perception of CT-optimal touch is usually assessed with subjective and explicit measures. As these can be prone to biases, it is important to develop implicit measures as well. The vestigial post-auricular muscle reflex (PAR) might be a good candidate, given its sensitivity to pleasant visual and auditory stimuli. As such, we investigated if the PAR can also be modulated by CT-optimal touch. We additionally compared how the PAR responds to social and robotic touch and conducted control experiments to replicate the reflex’s specific sensitivity to primary rewards. The sample consisted of 43 non-clinical participants. PAR responses were recorded while participants were touched by an experimenter and a robot, with a velocity of 3 cm/s (CT-optimal touch) and 18 cm/s (CT non-optimal touch). After each trial, participants also subjectively rated the pleasantness of the touch. Although the results revealed that CT-optimal touch was subjectively perceived to be more pleasant than CT non-optimal touch, it did not result in a potentiation of the PAR. Interestingly, social touch was subjectively perceived to be more pleasant than robotic touch and potentiated the PAR. The control experiments confirmed that the PAR is particularly modulated by primary (food, erotica), and not secondary (adventure, cuteness, monetary) rewards. While additional research is needed to further investigate the relation between the PAR and CT-optimal touch, the current results do already suggest that this reflex responds to the primary reward value of social touch.