Kazuhito Murata

Improving Shared Experiences by Haptic Telecommunication

We investigated how interpersonal hap tic telecommunication would affect the impression of an experience shared with another person. We conducted a psychological experiment wherein two people watched a comedy movie at the same time but in distant locations. They were asked to press a button when they found the movie hilarious, and this produced a vibratory hap tic stimulation to the other person. Thus, the two people were able to interact with each other and know the other persons reaction through hap tic telecommunication. In one group, the hap tic stimulation was interrupted for 90 s during the movie presentation. We found that the number of button presses decreased during the interruption period, suggesting that the feeling of hilarity could be modulated by communication with the other person. A post-experiment questionnaire survey confirmed that the uninterrupted group tended to attribute the hilarious feeling they experienced to sharing with the other person, and also expressed stronger empathy towards the other person. These results suggest that hap tic telecommunication may alter the quality of shared experience and increase the intimacy felt towards the other person.

Feelings of animacy and pleasantness from tactile stimulation: Effect of stimulus frequency and stimulated body part

We investigated how tactile stimuli induced feelings of animacy and pleasantness in human observers. First, we developed a new tactile display that enabled limp yet powerful tactile stimulations with a wide range of frequencies. Second, we examined the induced sensation by tactile stimulation as a function of stimulus frequency and body part. We found that the feeling of animacy was dependent upon stimulus frequency. The 12 Hz stimulation induced the strongest feeling of animacy. The frequency dependence was qualitatively similar but quantitatively different between finger and wrist stimulation. In addition, the modest feeling of animacy was associated with the strong feeling of pleasantness in finger stimulation. These results suggest that tactile stimulation can induce feelings of animacy in a frequency-dependent manner and that the frequency dependence and induced emotion of tactile stimulation may differ among different body parts.

Abstract Feelings Emerging from Haptic Stimulation

Feelings Emerging from Haptic Stimulation Kohske Takahashi1, Hideo Mitsuhashi2, Kazuhito Murata2, Shin Norieda2 and Katsumi Watanabe3 1Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 2NEC System Jisso Research Labs. 3Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo Japan Science and Technology Agency Japan