Component 3: Tactile Environmental Assessment (TEA-R v1.0) - Environmental Audit

This project introduces the Tactile Environmental Assessment – Revised (TEA-R v1.0), a structured framework for quantifying how physical and social environments modulate adult touch experiences. While existing measures such as Touch Comfort Scale (TCS) and Touch Deprivation Index (TDI) assess individual capacity and unmet tactile needs, TEA-R operationalizes the environment itself as an active regulatory variable. TEA-R evaluates five environmental domains: material composition, texture diversity, weight and grounding, thermal properties, and screen dominance. Each domain is scored on a standardized 0–4 scale, producing a composite score (0–20) that classifies environments as tactile deprived, tactile load, mixed, or tactile nourishing. Additional indices assess sensory richness, grounding synergy, and tactile displacement risk. The framework is designed for application across adult contexts including intimate relationships, clinical and rehabilitative care, and professional settings. Case-based examples demonstrate how environmental modification, independent of individual traits, can improve touch safety, reduce dysregulation, and enhance therapeutic and relational outcomes. This OSF registration documents the conceptual model, scoring logic, interpretation thresholds, and integration of TEA-R with TCS and TDI as a triadic system for adult touch assessment. The goal is to support transparency, replication, and future empirical validation of environmental modulation in tactile regulation.