Designing and Evaluating Haptic Affective Social Touch Systems to Address Isolation in Older Adults

Overview

Affective social touch is a powerful communication tool for care, reassurance, and emotional connection. However, most older adults experience reduced physical interaction due to social isolation, health limitations, or caregiving constraints. Prior research strongly demonstrates that touch conveys distinct emotions and supports both physical and mental well-being, even in populations with cognitive decline, where emotional responses may persist despite impaired memory. The purpose of this study is to design, prototype, and evaluate a wearable haptic affective social touch system capable of simulating comforting touch sensations, such as gentle pressure and rhythmic vibrations. The system focuses on simple haptic patterns developed through an iterative design process to integrate hardware and software components, followed by usability and perception testing with thirty older adult participants. Participant feedback was collected through surveys assessing comfort, perceived similarity to human touch, and emotional response. This work demonstrates the feasibility of creating a user-centered haptic system for affective touch and supports further development of mediated touch technologies to reduce perceived isolation and enhance emotional well-being in older adults. It informs the further development of the next-generation temperature-controlled vest and glove ensemble for dyadic affective touch between two users in remote locations.