Tactile information, according to many studies, has a direct impact on a person's perception of a situation. Unpleasant sensations in the body or an uncomfortable posture can even affect our attitude towards the interlocutor, although neither of these is directly related to him. What tactile information means in everyday life, what are its sources and features, will be discussed below.
Briefly about the main things
Let's dwell first of all on the definition of the term "information". Its most general interpretation is found in philosophy. Information is defined as one of the properties of the material world, essentially non-material. It exists independently of our consciousness and is inherent in all objects of living and inanimate nature.
In physics, any changes in the state of the system occur with the transmission of a signal from one object to another. Thus, heating and cooling, braking and movement, and so on. A set of signals constitutes a message. The term "information" in physics generalizes the concepts of "message" and "signal".
Types of information
There are many approaches to classifying information. One of them is based on the way of perception. On this basisinformation is divided into five types:
- auditory;
- visual;
-
tactile (tactile);
- olfactory;
-
tasty.
tactile information
The vast majority of information about the world around a person receives through vision. Hearing also plays a significant role. The last of these types of information - tactile, olfactory and gustatory - make up only a small percentage of the information perceived by a person. In animals, this ratio is somewhat different. It is known that tactile information in the lives of many of them plays a much more important role than vision.
The organs of touch
Despite the fact that the sense of touch, at first glance, plays a relatively small role in life, people are not able to do without it. A person receives tactile information through nerve endings located on the skin, in muscles and joints, on the surface of the mucous membranes. Receptors perceive temperature, touch, vibration, changes in body position, texture, and so on.
Information from nerve endings is transmitted through nerve fibers to the brain. There it is processed, and a signal is sent to the body's organs, for example, to pull your hand away from a hot object.
Biological meaning
What is the source of tactile information? The answer is very simple: everything that affects the corresponding receptors. Through the organs of touch we feeltemperature, humidity, texture (surface character), vibration. Receptors transmit information about the position in space of the whole body or a specific part of it.
As already mentioned, despite the rather small percentage of information that we receive through touch, it is necessary for a normal human life. Various disorders - loss of sensitivity, damage to the nerve channels that transmit information from receptors to the brain, and others - lead to dangerous situations and the inability to navigate. A simple example: in the absence of tactile receptors, it is easy to get a severe burn, because it is through them that tactile information about the heating temperature of an object on which, for example, a hand is laid, is transmitted to the brain. The organs of touch save us in the dark, when the eyes cannot tell what lies ahead. Tactile receptors play an important role in transmitting information about the state of the body. They are involved in the formation of the so-called muscular feeling, which plays an important role in the process of movement.
Touch in animals
For animals, tactile information is more important than for humans. There are many examples of this. There are animals in which touch actually replaces sight. These include the inhabitants of the deep sea, where the light simply does not reach. The sense of touch helps the spider to feel that its prey is already entangled in the "webs" set up.
Bees communicate the location of a flower with a special dance that includes touch.
Greatly tactile receptors in the skin are developed in animals that climb trees. Many representatives of the fauna have vibrissae - special organs of touch that can respond not only to touch, but also to air vibrations. In appearance, they resemble hairs. Vibrissae, however, are more rigid, longer and thicker.
Developing a tactile sense
In modern society, it is not difficult to find people with a more developed sense of touch. The sensitivity of some areas of the skin increases as a result of the characteristics of the profession. For example, craftsmen who constantly deal with fine details have an increased ability to distinguish tiny elements, cracks, etc. with their fingertips.
And of course, the sense of touch is aggravated in visually impaired or blind people. Tactile information for the visually impaired compensates for the lack of visual information. The sense of touch develops especially strongly in deaf-blind people.
Braille
Tactile information a person receives through touch. For deaf-blind-mute people, this is the only source of information about the world around them. The visually impaired also have hearing, but our world is arranged in such a way that the vast majority of information is transmitted and stored in the form of text. Today, blind and visually impaired people use Braille to read and write.
Rough dot tactile fontLouis Braille designed in 1824. The future French tiflopedagogue was then 15 years old.
A bit of history
Methods of presenting tactile information was not a favorite subject of young Louis. The invention of the font was a logical consequence of the boy's blindness. Louis Braille at the age of 3 hurt his eyes with a saddlery knife and lost his sight by the age of five. At that time, there were many books in special institutions for children with visual impairments. They were written using relief-linear writing. Its main disadvantage was its bulkiness, which did not allow to fit a lot of information on one page.
During training, Braille learned about the existence of the "night alphabet" by Charles Barbier. A French officer designed it for military purposes: the font made it possible to read reports at night. Information was recorded on cardboard by piercing. Inspired by the invention of Barbier, Louis Braille created his own embossed dot font.
Braille features
As the name suggests, dotted font is written with dots. The braille used six dots arranged in two columns. There is also a variant of the font that uses eight dots, placed respectively four in a column. The first letters of the Latin alphabet are written with upper and middle dots. For those following them, points are added in a certain order: first, a point is placed from the bottom right, then to the right and left, then to the right. Braille also allows you to display numbers, various signs of mathematical operations and notes.
Features of the invention of the Frenchtyphlopedagogue are manifested both in the process of reading and during writing. Information fixed with the help of a font is read by raised dots. Accordingly, they must be applied on the reverse side of the sheet. In this case, reading occurs from left to right, as in the case of ordinary text. Braille is written from right to left. The numbering of points in columns from top to bottom makes it easier to write. They are written in reverse order.
Braille originally consists of 64 characters, one of which is a space. Eight-point allows you to write 256 different characters. Of course, this is a very small set. Often the limitations of the font are overcome by the use of double characters, which are a combination of two simple ones, which separately have their own meaning. At the same time, the received symbols often have more than one meaning (sometimes up to ten).
Invention prevalence
Today Braille is used all over the world. It is adapted for many languages, including Russian. In our country, the printing of books using the invention of the French typhlopedagogue began in 1885. Braille also exists for Chinese, as well as rare languages such as Guarani, Tibetan and Dzongkha.
The main achievement of Braille is that he created not just a way of writing and reading text for the blind, but made it quite convenient to use. Information printed on a sheet according to certain rules is easilyread with the index finger of one or both hands. The reading speed is 150 words per minute. For comparison: a person with normal vision is able to read at a speed of 250 words in the same period of time.
Thus, tactile information is no less important for living beings than visual or auditory information. Mammals, insects and other representatives of the fauna with the help of touch navigate in space, establish contacts between individuals, learn about danger, and so on. A person has a less developed tactile sensitivity, but its role in life is difficult to overestimate.
