Data collected from young (<23 years ) and older (>64 years) adults while they used pressing or sliding contact with the index finger to explore grating surfaces. All of the data are stored in Matlab format. The data are stored in a zip file 'Aging_Exploratory_touch.zip'. When uncompressed the file contains the data structured as follows: Force data from the exploration is stored in folders with the suffix '_Force'. Force data from controlled sliding trials used to calculate coefficients of friction is stored in folders with the suffix '_Friction'. Demographic, grating orientation threshold and dexterity data are stored in a Matlab file labelled 'AncillaryData.mat'. Further information about file structures can be found in the file labelled 'Readme.txt'