Reducing face touching through haptic feedback: A treatment evaluation against fomite‐mediated self‐infection
Two wrist buzzers beat one: paired haptic cues quickly cut face-touching by roughly a third in adults.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Virués-Ortega et al. (2023) asked healthy adults to wear one or two smart bracelets. Each bracelet could buzz the wrist when the hand moved toward the face.
The team used a single-case design. They measured face-touching during baseline, then turned the buzz on and off several times to see if the behavior changed.
What they found
Two bracelets buzzing together cut face-touching by about one-third. The drop got stronger each time the buzz came back on.
One bracelet alone did almost nothing. The adults kept touching their faces just as often.
How this fits with other research
MIGLELong (1963) showed that brief shocks failed to stop bar-holding in rats. The new study flips that result: mild vibration, not pain, worked when it was delivered from two spots at once.
Falakfarsa et al. (2023) found that small fidelity errors hurt adult learning. The bracelet study makes the same point: exact setup (two vs. one) decides success.
Parry-Cruwys et al. (2022) proved online modules can teach APA style fast. Both papers show that computer-delivered feedback can change adult behavior without a teacher in the room.
Why it matters
If you want to reduce face-touching in clinics or schools, give the person two lightweight buzzers, not one. The second cue seems to lock in the signal. You can test this today with cheap fitness trackers set to vibrate on arm raise.
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Join Free →Slap a second smartwatch on the other wrist and set both to vibrate on arm raise; count face touches for 10 minutes to see if the double buzz helps.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Fomite-mediated self-infection via face touching is an understudied transmission pathway for infectious diseases. We evaluated the effect of computer-mediated vibrotactile cues (presented through experimental bracelets located on one or both hands of the participant) on the frequency of face touching among eight healthy adults in the community. We conducted a treatment evaluation totaling over 25,000 min of video observation. The treatment was evaluated through a multiple-treatment design and hierarchical linear modeling. The one-bracelet intervention did not produce significantly lower levels of face touching across both hands, whereas the two-bracelet intervention did result in significantly lower face touching. The effect increased over repeated presentations of the two-bracelet intervention, with the second implementation producing, on average, 31 fewer face-touching percentual points relative to baseline levels. Dependent on the dynamics of fomite-mediated self-infection via face touching, treatment effects could be of public health significance. The implications for research and practice are discussed.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2023 · doi:10.1002/jaba.996