In 1973 Manfred Clynes wrote a paper about the biocybernetics of emotion communication in which he described an experiment which seemed to point to a universal metalanguage with which human beings communicate specific emotions by touch. In an attempt to confirm Clynes's findings by replicating his experiment, a flaw was discovered in the design of his apparatus for detecting tactile patterns, and the replication study was undertaken using an improved pressure-detection instrument. Data from the replication study were analysed using various techniques but no correlations were found to confirm Clynes's original work.
References
1.
ClynesM. (1973) Sentics: Biocybernetics of emotion communication. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 220, 57–131.
2.
GormanB.CrainW. (1974) Decoding of sentograms. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 39, 784–786.
3.
HirshbergN. (1980) The measurement and interpretation of musical pulse shape. Unpublished doctoral thesis, State Univer. of New York at Stony Brook.
4.
TrussoniS. (1986) An investigation of pre-lingual forms of communication. Unpublished Master's thesis, Dalhousie University.
5.
WierzbickaA. (1986) Human emotions: Universal or culture-specific?American Anthropologist, 88, 584–594.
