It’s Touching: Understanding Touch-Affect Association in Shape-Change with Kinematic Features

With the proliferation of shape-change research in affective computing, there is a need to deepen understandings of affective responses to shape-change display. Little research has focused on affective reactions to tactile experiences in shape-change, particularly in the absence of visual information. It is also rare to study response to the shape-change as it unfolds, isolated from a final shape-change outcome. We report on two studies on touch-affect associations, using the crossmodal “Bouba-Kiki” paradigm, to understand affective responses to shape-change as it unfolds. We investigate experiences with a shape-change gadget, as it moves between rounded (“Bouba”) and spiky (“Kiki”) forms. We capture affective responses via the circumplex model, and use a motion analysis approach to understand the certainty of these responses. We find that touch-affect associations are influenced by both the size and the frequency of the shape-change and may be modality-dependent, and that certainty in affective associations is influenced by association-consistency.