Towards the Creation of a Tactile Version of the Self-Assessment Manikin (T-SAM) for the Emotional Assessment of Visually Impaired People

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is one of the most extensively used instruments in the situational assessment of the emotional state in experimental or clinical contexts of emotional induction. However, there is no instrument of this kind adapted for blind or visually impaired people. In this paper, we present the results of the preliminary validation of a tactile adaptation of the SAM, the Tactile Self-Assessment Manikin (T-SAM). For this purpose, 5 people with visual disabilities participated in a focus group in which the usability of this adaptation was evaluated, as well as its usefulness in representing the valence and arousal subscales of the original instrument. The analysis of the content of this focus group suggests a pertinent content validity, while the participants correctly understood both the purpose of the instrument, and the tactile representations of valence and activation constructs created by the research team. However, the difficulty of blind people from birth to understand the graphic representation of an emotional facial expression was detected, which represents a limitation to control in future steps in the validation of T-SAM.