The impact of affective touch on physiological self-regulation among preschool-age children: The influence of emotional context and effortful control

The preschool period marks a crucial transition from a regulatory environment primarily governed by parents to children’s emerging capacity for autonomous control over their behavior and emotions. Affective touch, mediated by activation of C-tactile afferents may play a pivotal role in facilitating this transition by supporting physiological vagal activity, which eventually becomes integrated into processes of emotional and behavioral self-regulation. This study aims to investigate whether affective touch modulates heart rate variability (HRV), an index of vagal activity associated with autonomic regulation, among young children ( N = 68, age range 3–6 years) following exposure to neutral and emotional (crying scene) cartoons. The results unveiled a more pronounced increase of HRV during tactile stimulation in children experiencing affective touch compared with those exposed to nonaffective touch across both neutral and emotionally salient conditions. This suggests that affective touch may enhance autonomic vagal activity. Furthermore, temperamental traits were found to modulate this effect: children with lower scores of effortful control exhibited a greater increase in HRV during affective touch stimulation, indicating that affective touch may be particularly beneficial for children who struggle to regulate their behaviors and emotions in everyday activities.