Touch and Textures:

An 1895 article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry had people rub 51 different cloths and report which type of materials felt pleasant to touch. And a 1937 study suggested that people find smooth and soft fabrics “relaxing.”

More recently in a 2012 study, 123 design students were asked to discuss the kinds of fabrics they liked to touch. The students disliked fabrics that were scratchy, rough or itchy; 41 percent mentioned wool. Coarse, bumpy or cold fabrics were also not popular.

The positive properties that cropped up most often were soft, smooth and warm (some of the runners-up were silky, fuzzy and fluffy). Silk, cotton, and fleece got the highest rankings. The students frequently used emotion-laden words to explain their partialities, such as cozy, cuddly, safe and comforting.

“Cognitive touch properties become more meaningful and memorable when they are linked with effective properties, which combine to satisfy physiological and psychological needs,” the researchers wrote.

It’s interesting to find that universally humans prefer soft, fluffy and warm textiles, I wonder if that has anything to do with the way we’re treated as infants. If our alien has always lived in the ground, we could make the assumption that it prefers warm, dry and crumbly textures. For example dust, dirt, roots, stone even, but once introduced to earth, would they find our textiles appealing? I think they would like muslin and whatever potato sacks are made out of, its got that rough earth feel. They’d need something to protect them from the damp earth.

An example of sensory disorder:

“Most of my things are about touch, usually textures. When it comes to eating any type of soggy bread is a big no-no, I usually avoid sandwiches/subs and burgers because some kind of sauce or oil could have soaked into the bread. Even touching it will make me gag let alone putting it in my mouth, which then I wouldn’t even be able to make myself swallow the food. Bread or croutons dipped in soup, cookies dipped in milk type things absolutely gross me out just by looking at them because ill feel/imagine the texture in my mouth. Cant do ‘soft chunks’ of foods: chunks in salsa or pasta sauces with tomato, onion etc chunks. Mushrooms raw or cooked, cooked onion is the worst feeling after the soggy bread…

I cannot stand wet hair, it grosses me out to touch or to feel my hair being touched by someone else while wet. Anything that feels rough/dry/cracked or bumpy I cannot help but pick at/rub over constantly. I avoid some types of… dry feeling fabrics? It feels uncomfortable to touch softer paper napkins/kleenex and after using them I have to rub my fingers together or on something else to get rid of the feeling. Sometimes I get the feeling in my mouth as if i was chewing on napkin, grinding it between my teeth… and that’s just not a pleasant feeling haha. Takes forever to get rid of the sensation. Whispy, fluffy types fabrics, like cotton balls or cotton stuffing, those foam mats you put over your mattress are all veryyyy unpleasant.” – source

Misophonia:

Misophonia, literally “hatred of sound,” was proposed in 2000 as a condition in which negative emotions, thoughts, and physical reactions are triggered by specific sounds. It is also called “select sound sensitivity syndrome” and “sound-rage.”

Maybe of our alien doesn’t make much noise, it has a hatred of other sounds, this condition is quite rare in the human populas, but came up while I was researching reactions to different textures. It turns out sufferers don’t actually have to hear the sound trigger, just seeing someone touch or do something that emits the sound can trigger a sufferer of misophonia, like imagining nails on a chalkboard or seeing someone rub bits of polystyrene together.