Skin wetness perception across body sites in children and adolescents aged 7–16 years old

Human skin wetness perception relies on the multisensory integration of thermal and mechanical cues during contact with moisture. Yet, it is unknown whether children and adolescents perceive skin wetness similarly to younger and older adults. We investigated skin wetness perceptions across the forehead, neck, forearm, and foot dorsum in 12 children/adolescents (4F/8M; 12 ± 3 years), 41 younger (21F/20M; 25 ± 3 years), and 21 older adults (11F/10M; 56 ± 6 years), during two established quantitative sensory tests. Our results indicated that, given the same moisture content (0.8 mL of water), very cold-wet stimuli applied to the forearm were perceived by all groups as wetter than neutral-wet (mean difference: 35.5 mm on a 100-mm visual analogue scale for wetness [95% CI: 22.3, 38.7]; P < 0.0001; ∼35% difference) and very hot-wet stimuli (mean difference: 22.7 mm [95% CI: 14.5, 40.9]; P < 0.0001; ∼23% difference). Children/adolescents also reported greater wetness perceptions than older adults during cold-wet stimulation of the forehead, neck and foot dorsum (mean difference: 20.6 mm; 95% CI: 1.5, 39.7; P = 0.031; ∼21% difference). In all age groups, the foot dorsum presented higher cold-wet sensitivity (mean difference: 11.1mm [95%CI 2.2, 20.0] p = 0.010; ~11% difference) and lower warm-wet sensitivity than the neck (mean difference: 12.9mm [95%CI 2.8, 23.0] p = 0.008; ~13% difference). We conclude that wetness perceptions in children/adolescents (age range: 7–16 years) are similar to those of adults in that both present (1) a characteristic U-shaped relationship between stimulus temperature and perceived wetness magnitude and (2) similar body regional patterns. These findings provide novel evidence on age-dependent variations in wetness perception which could inform user-centred innovation in thermal protection and garment design.