Touch is also the first sense to develop in the womb and the last sense one loses with age. Even before we are born, we start responding to touch and also start touching our own selves. During pregnancy, the senses develop in the following The importance of touch for humans has been demonstrated in many studies. For instance, research has looked at what an infant desires more—a mother's touch or basic nutrition? Studies with infant macaque monkeys (Harlow, 1958) have Need for touch scale
Peck and Childers (2003a) have created the Need-for-Touch scale which picks up individual differences in need-for-touch. The scale is made up of two sub-scales—instrumental and autotelic. The instrumental need for touch, as the name denotes, is for functionality, i.e., for a specific objective, generally to buy a product. A typical question for this scale is “The only way to make sure a product is worth buying is to actually touch it.” The autotelic need for touch on the other hand, captures compulsive touch or the emotional component of touch—touch for the sake of touch alone. A typical question for this is “Touching products can be fun.” Both the functional and pleasure dimensions have six questions each. The scale has been used widely and has been able to discern differences in judgments based on differences in need-for-touch (e.g., Krishna and Morrin, 2008 and Peck and Wiggins, 2006). Such differences also affect the impact of humans touching products, humans touching humans, and products touching products. We look at research done in each of these areas.