Tactility

Tactility refers to the sense of touch as a perceptual domain, including detection and discrimination of mechanical stimuli applied to the skin. It covers weight, pressure, vibration, texture, temperature, and pain. Tactility underpins object manipulation and material perception, enabling users to identify properties like roughness, hardness, and compliance even without vision.

The skin contains mechanoreceptors—Merkel cells, Meissner corpuscles, Ruffini endings, Pacinian corpuscles—each tuned to different stimulus features. Tactile perception arises from encoding of spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of skin deformation; central processing integrates input with proprioception and vision. Factors influencing tactility include contact area, stimulus intensity, frequency of vibration, moisture, skin condition, and attention.

Tactility is studied in psychology and neuroscience through psychophysical methods, vibration thresholds, two-point discrimination, and texture discrimination tasks. Techniques range from monofilaments to vibrotactile actuators.

In daily life, tactile cues support object manipulation, Braille literacy and tactile signaling, tactile paving for navigation. In technology and design, haptic feedback in smartphones, gaming controllers, and virtual reality devices conveys texture and force; prosthetics rely on haptics to restore sensation. In textiles and material science, tactility informs design and performance, including softness and grip.

The term tactility derives from Latin tactilis, from tangere to touch. In research, tactility is treated as a broad sense of touch, distinct from kinesthetic or proprioceptive senses but closely linked.