Enhancing Emotions Through Touch – Haptices as a Special Case
: Stina Ojala, Riitta Lahtinen, Russ Palmer, Anna Äärelä
Publisher: Universitātes Latviešu valodas institūts
: 2016
: Linguistica Lettica
: 24
: 34
: 49
: http://www.lulavi.lv/media/upload/tiny/files/LL24_sakums saturs.pdf(external)
Words in a conversation are not just what is said, but also how it is said. In other words, speech conveys emotions too. Emotional markers in speech signal are not easy to follow if a person has a hearing and visual impairment, as emotions are expressed in a very complex way not yet fully understood by speech science (Waaramaa-Mäki-Kulmala 2009). Certain facial muscle movements indicate specific emotions. Most of us recognise these naturally, but it can also be learned. All in all, there are seven universal facial expressions (Ekman 2003a). Emotions carry very important information in the dialogue – the so-called underlying messages. Emotional content in speech can be enhanced by using touch based messages called haptices related to basic emotions, such as happy, angry etc. Haptices for example using ERH (emotional response hand) can convey the emotional content of the sentence uttered in a neutral tone to be better intelligible for the hearing and visually impaired receiver because of possible distortion caused by assistive hearing devices. (Lahtinen 2008; Lahtinen et al. 2010). This is one example of multisensory information integration in the brain.