Preferences for touch gestures in audio-tactile communication

People use different touch gestures in everyday life to interact with each other. However, remote communication typically supports only auditory and visual modalities. Gestures such as squeezing, stroking and patting could be used for supporting emotional communication between remote users. In this paper we study how different touch gestures are used as a part of audio communication. A user study was conducted where participant pairs were provided with hand-held devices that converted squeeze and finger touch gestures to vibrotactile stimulation. When one participant touched the device, another participant felt the touch simultaneously on a second device. The participants' task was to use the devices during conversations that varied in their emotional topics. The results of touch use analysis showed that the participants spent more time interacting via squeeze. Also, male participants rated squeeze as more suitable than finger touch. The emotional conversation topic did not have an effect on the use of touch gestures. In discussion the current findings are compared to prior research where only the tactile modality was used.