Recognition of familiar individuals by touch

I have examined whether adults can recognize their boyfriends/husbands or girlfriends/wives by stroking either their partner's hand or face. On both trials, subjects were asked to chose their mate from amongst two unfamiliar age- and gender-matched adult foils. During testing, the subject's eyes and nose were covered and auditory cues were masked by ambient noise. The results show that a significant proportion of the total sample succeeded on one or both of the touch-recognition tasks. However, while both women and men were successful at the face-touch-recognition task, only the women were successful at the hand-recognition task. I conclude that tactile cues afforded by stroking skin are sufficiently salient to allow for individual recognition. As for the gender-related difference, women may have an advantage at hand recognition because men's hands are more discriminable than women's hands.