Sensory processing and the touch sense
Our touch, or tactile sense, is a sense that most people are reasonably familiar with. It is one of the five senses you would have been taught about in school.
The touch sense responds to anything that touches the skin. The skin is a very clever organ. It responds to much more than touch. It sends sensory messages regarding touch, pain, temperature and vibration. There are also three different types of touch that the skin processes, I will explain these below.

Sensory processing and the touch sense
Our touch, or tactile sense, is a sense that most people are reasonably familiar with. It is one of the five senses you would have been taught about in school.
The touch sense responds to anything that touches the skin. The skin is a very clever organ. It responds to much more than touch. It sends sensory messages regarding touch, pain, temperature and vibration. There are also three different types of touch that the skin processes, I will explain these below.
Basics of touch
Our skin receives the touch sensations and sends this information to the brain. It is important to remember that the touch sense is different to proprioception. Our proprioceptors process sensory information from our muscles and joints. Where as, the touch sense receives information from our skin. The touch and proprioceptive senses work together to coordinate with our movements. The skin receives more than just touch sensations, there’s more on that below!
Our touch sense helps us helps us to
The skin receives more than touch sensations
The skin is the largest organ in the human body. As I’ve already mentioned, it processes more than just touch sensations. It also receives information about the following sensations from our environment.
Did you know there are three different types of touch!
Light touch
Light touch is also called protective touch. This is because its job is to keep us safe. It responds to anything that brushes the skin lightly and can include tickling. Light touch will usually set off our body’s protective warning system. A good example of this is if you unexpectedly run into a spider web. Your body will have an automatic protective response and move you out of the way. It is also this part of our touch sense that will move our hand if we touch something hot or touch something that hurts, like a thorn. The light touch pathway responds immediately but the information from it is not very specific. It is thought that children and adults with tactile sensitivity pay more attention to messages from this pathway than children and adults without sensory issues. I explore this further in my online course – Sensory Aware with GriffinOT .
Discriminative touch
Discriminative touch is the part of your touch system which provides very specific and detailed information about what you are touching or where you have been touched. If you think back to the spider web example, the light touch system would know something unpleasant is touching your arm and make you move. The discriminative touch pathway will tell the brain that what touched the skin felt sticky. From your previous experiences your brain could figure out it was likely a spider web. Then, when you feel your arm to find exactly where the spider web is and take it off, that’s also your discriminative touch pathway working. This pathway is also very important for accurate and precise fine motor skills. It is thought to be important for the development of motor planning, or praxis, too.
Touch pressure or deep touch pressure
Touch pressure is firmer touch or a squeeze. It is sometimes called deep touch pressure. It works alongside the discriminative touch pathway. A good example is if you receive a hug. Your discriminative touch pathway tells you where the person is touching you but you also feel how hard they are squeezing. That sensation of how soft or hard they are squeezing is called touch pressure. Another example would be when you tighten your shoes, you know if they are too tight or loose by the amount of pressure they are putting on your feet. Also, if you are under a heavy blanket, you can feel the pressure it is putting on your skin.

Mia’s story
Mia has always disliked having her hair done and going to the hair dresser has always been a struggle. She is fussy with certain food textures, especially fruit or things with lumps. These are common examples of touch sensory sensitivity. Mia’s touch sense interprets touch differently to how others experience it. For her everyday touch sensations can be painful and uncomfortable. Her touch sense responds more frequently with a fight, flight, freeze response.
What might it look like if our touch sense isn’t working well?
When the touch sense doesn’t process the sensory inputs it receives very well there are three typical sensory challenges: sensory reactivity/modulation; sensory discrimination and sensory movement. If you are not familiar with sensory processing, you can read this article for more information – ‘What is Sensory Processing Disorder?’ The rest of this article we will consider how these sensory processing difficulties affect the touch sense.
Differing reactivity to touch sensory inputs
Some people have different tolerance levels to being touched, there are three typical responses. Some children and adults are slower to respond to touch sensory input, which means they need more touch input to understand. Their response could be to seek out extra touch input or they might be slower to notice touch sensory inputs. Other children and adults are sensitive to touch. Their brains find some types of touch overwhelming and in some cases painful. Some common signs of each type of response include:
Slow responses to touch sensory input:
Sensitivity to touch sensory input
Touch sensitivity can be called tactile defensiveness by occupational therapists. It is commonly reported by children and adults who have autism. I discuss touch sensitivity further in the article What is tactile defensiveness?
Seeking out touch inputs
There are a few reasons touch seeking behaviours may be observed. Firstly, the child may have slower processing of touch sensations, so they seek out more information. Secondly, the child might have poor proprioceptive awareness. In this case, they are using their touch sense to compensate for reduced proprioceptive sensory awareness. Finally, the child might find the additional touch sensory input calming or it might just help them to focus.
Poor touch discrimination
Touch or tactile discrimination is all about the ‘What’ and ‘Where.’ What is touching me, what does it feel like? Is it hot or cold, dry or sticky, hard or soft, sharp or blunt? What shape is it, is it big or small? Where is it touching me? On the foot or toe? The hand or finger, elbow or arm, forehead or chin, or the back or front?
Touch discrimination gives our bodies all of the detailed information about what we are touching and where we are being touched. It is touch discrimination that allows us to put our hand into our pocket and pull out the £1 coin instead of a 50 pence coin. Our hand can feel the different shape of the coins and pull out the right one. The same is true if you put your hand into your bag to find your keys, your fingers can feel the difference between your keys and your wallet; you can discriminate between the two.
Poor praxis (dyspraxia)
You may be thinking what does the touch sense have to do with dyspraxia? Whilst researching Sensory Integration, Jean Ayres discovered that poor touch discrimination was linked to dyspraxia. In her final model, she included poor ability to locate touch and an inability to recognise object shapes by feeling them as signs of dyspraxia. She thought that because the touch sense helps to create the map of our body (called body schema) within the brain, it was essential for children to learn how to then plan and organise their body movements. You can read more about dyspraxia here.
The touch sense is essential for success at school. It supports accuracy with fine motor skills. And, it helps wish self-regulation.
Why is our touch sense important for learning and participation?
If you want to be successful at learning at school, you need to have good fine motor skills! You need to be able to hold a pencil, to be able to open your lunch box and do up your buttons and to cut with scissors and open up glue. It is our touch sense that supports our fine motor skills and allows us to do all of these activities successfully.
Our touch sense also helps with self-regulation. Mothers, for example, comfort babies with their touch. Even as adults, hugs often still help to comfort. Children and adults that have difficulty modulating touch sensory inputs may be more distracted by touch. This could include finding wearing their school uniform a challenge. Or they might join in less with messy play or other learning activities.
Where to Next?
To keep learning about the touch sense, including the different types of touch you can join GriffinOT’s Free Introduction to Sensory Processing online training. You may also want read more about touch pressure.
Picture Credits
Hand touching finger – Pixabay.com through Pexels.com
Boy with sand – Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash
Date last updated by Kim: 26th May 2024