Ticklish Sensation Book Pdf

[Anthony Small]

In1897, psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin described a "tickle" as two different types of phenomena.[2] One type is caused by very light movement across the skin. This type of tickle, called a knismesis, generally does not produce laughter and is sometimes accompanied by an itching sensation.

The tickle can be divided into two separate categories of sensation, knismesis and gargalesis. Knismesis, also known as a "moving itch", is a mildly annoying sensation caused by a light movement on the skin, such as from a crawling insect. This may explain why it has evolved in many animals.[3] For example, a dog exhibiting the scratch reflex is an example of knismesis. When stimulated in the saddle region, most dogs will exhibit a reflexive rhythmic twitching of their hind legs. This reflex can be brought on by actions such as scratching, brushing, stroking, or even tapping the sensitive area. Horses also exhibit a response to knismesis, as they can be observed twitching the panniculus carnosus muscle in response to insects landing on their sides. Gargalesis reactions refer to a laughter-provoking feeling caused by a harsher, deeper pressure, stroked across the skin in various regions of the body.[3] These reactions are thought to be limited to humans and other primates, although some research has indicated that rats can also be tickled in this way.[4] A German study also indicates that the gargalesis type of tickle triggers a defense mechanism for humans in the hypothalamus conveying submissiveness or fleeing from danger.[5]

It appears that the tickle sensation involves signals from nerve fibres associated with both pain and touch. In 1939, Yngve Zotterman of the Karolinska Institute studied the knismesis type of tickle in cats, by measuring the action potentials generated in the nerve fibres while lightly stroking the skin with a piece of cotton wool. Zotterman found that the "tickling" sensation depended, in part, on the nerves that generate pain.[6] Further studies have discovered that when the pain nerves are severed by surgeons, in an effort to reduce intractable pain, the tickle response is also diminished.[7] However, in some patients that have lost pain sensation due to spinal cord injury, some aspects of the tickle response do remain.[8] Tickle may also depend on nerve fibres associated with the sense of touch. When circulation is severed in a limb, the response to touch and tickle are lost prior to the loss of pain sensation.[9]

It might be tempting to speculate that areas of the skin that are the most sensitive to touch would also be the most ticklish, but this does not seem to be the case. While the palm of the hand is far more sensitive to touch, most people find that the soles of their feet are the most ticklish.[9] Other commonly ticklish areas include the belly, sides of the torso, underarms, ribs, midriff, neck, back of the knee, thighs, buttocks, nose, feet and perineum.[10]Some evidence suggests that laughing associated with tickling is a nervous reaction that can be triggered; indeed, very ticklish people often start laughing before actually being tickled.[11]

A tickle fight is a playful leisure activity[12] in which two people, or sometimes more, tickle each other to the point where one of the participants gives up.[citation needed] It can occur as a sudden outburst without consensus about it,[citation needed] or as a carefully designed challenge with clear ground rules.[13] Tickle fighting is similar to pillow fighting, in the sense that they are both silly and playful activities, usually not taken too seriously.[citation needed] Tickle fighting is especially enjoyed by young children.[14] Tickle fight should not be confused with tickle torture, which is an abusive and serious torturing method.[citation needed]

Charles Darwin theorized on the link between tickling and social relations, arguing that tickling provokes laughter through the anticipation of pleasure.[18] If a stranger tickles a child without any preliminaries, catching the child by surprise, the likely result will be not laughter but withdrawal and displeasure. Darwin also noticed that for tickling to be effective, you must not know the precise point of stimulation in advance, and reasoned that this is why most people cannot effectively tickle themselves.

Darwin explained why we laugh when we are tickled by saying, "The imagination is sometimes said to be tickled by a ludicrous idea; and this so-called tickling of the mind is curiously analogous with that of the body. Laughter from being tickled [is manifestly a] reflex action; and likewise this is shown by the minute unstriped muscles, which serve to erect the separate hairs on the body".[19]

Another tickling social relationship is that which forms between siblings of relatively the same age.[20] Many case studies have indicated that siblings often use tickling as an alternative to outright violence when attempting to either punish or intimidate one another. The sibling tickling relationship can occasionally develop into an anti-social situation, or tickle torture, where one sibling will tickle the other without mercy. The motivation behind tickle torture is often to portray the sense of domination the tickler has over the victim.[20]

As with parents and siblings, tickling serves as a bonding mechanism between friends, and is classified by psychologists as part of the fifth and highest grade of social play which involves special intimacy or "cognitive interaction".[20] This suggests that tickling works best when all the parties involved feel comfortable with the situation and one another.[21] It can also serve as an outlet for sexual energy during adolescence,[22] and a number of people have stated in a study that their private areas were ticklish.[23][24]

While many people assume that other people enjoy tickling, a recent survey of 84 college students indicated that only 32% of respondents enjoy being tickled, with 32% giving neutral responses and 36% stating that they do not enjoy being tickled.[25] The study also found a very high level of embarrassment and anxiety associated with tickling. However, in the same study the authors found that the facial indicators of happiness and amusement do not correlate, with some people who indicated that they do not enjoy being tickled actually smiling more often during tickling than those who indicated that they do enjoy being tickled,[25] which suggests that the facial indicators are not produced in response to the same emotions as under typical circumstances. It has also been suggested that people may enjoy tickling because it elicits laughter as well as the feeling of being tickled. Social psychologists find that mimicking expressions generally cause people to some degree experience that emotion.[9]

Excessive tickling has been described as a primary sexual obsession and, under these circumstances, is sometimes considered a form of paraphilia.[26] Tickling can also be a form of sexual harassment.[21]

Some of history's greatest thinkers have pondered the mysteries of the tickle response, including Plato, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin.[9] In The Assayer, Galileo philosophically examines tickling in the context of how we perceive reality:[27]

When touched upon the soles of the feet, for example, it feels in addition to the common sensation of touch a sensation on which we have imposed a special name, "tickling." This sensation belongs to us and not to the hand... A piece of paper or a feather drawn lightly over any part of our bodies performs intrinsically the same operations of moving and touching, but by touching the eye, the nose, or the upper lip it excites in us an almost intolerable titillation, even though elsewhere it is scarcely felt. This titillation belongs entirely to us and not to the feather; if the live and sensitive body were removed it would remain no more than a mere word.

Francis Bacon and Charles Darwin believed that humorous laughter requires a "light" frame of mind. But they differed on ticklish laughter: Darwin thought that the same light state of mind was required, whereas Bacon disagreed. When tickled, noted Bacon, "men even in a grieved state of mind, yet cannot sometimes forbear laughing."[28]

One hypothesis, as mentioned above, is that tickling serves as a pleasant bonding experience between parent and child.[9] However, this hypothesis does not adequately explain why many children and adults find tickling to be an unpleasant experience. Another view maintained is that tickling develops as a prenatal response and that the development of sensitive areas on the fetus helps to orient the fetus into favourable positions while in the womb.[29]

It is unknown why certain people find areas of the body to be more ticklish than others; additionally, studies have shown that there is no significant difference in ticklishness among the genders.[30]In 1924, J. C. Gregory proposed that the most ticklish places on the body were also those areas that were the most vulnerable during hand-to-hand combat. He posited that ticklishness might confer an evolutionary advantage by enticing the individual to protect these areas. Consistent with this idea, University of Iowa psychiatrist Donald W. Black observed that most ticklish spots are found in the same places as the protective reflexes.[31]

A third, hybrid hypothesis, has suggested that tickling encourages the development of combat skills.[9] Most tickling is done by parents, siblings and friends and is often a type of rough-and-tumble play, during which time children often develop defensive and combat moves. Although people generally make movements to get away from, and report disliking, being tickled, laughter encourages the tickler to continue. If the facial expressions induced by tickle were less pleasant the tickler would be less likely to continue, thus diminishing the frequency of these combat lessons.

To understand how much of the tickle response is dependent on the interpersonal relationship of the parties involved, Christenfeld and Harris presented subjects with a "mechanical tickle machine". They found that the subjects laughed just as much when they believed they were being tickled by a machine as when they thought they were being tickled by a person.[32] Harris goes on to suggest that the tickle response is reflex, similar to the startle reflex, that is contingent upon the element of surprise.[9]

3a8082e126