I am a newbie here so bear with me please.
I think I understand the 1st part of your instructions: You are saying to create an instance variable within the properties of the sprite named "touches"...with an initial value set to 0.
But I am a bit confused with the 2nd part: I have created an "On Touched (sprite name)" event. I go to Add action/sprite (the one with the animations and the instance variable from step 1)/add to...I select the only option in the drop down called "touches"...set the value 1...click done.
Then I click add action again...select the sprite (with the animations and new instance variable associated with it)...choose set animation...type the name of my 1st animation between the quotation marks and then add &Spritetouches behind that with no spaces. I leave beginning selected in the FROM dropdown and hit done.
I end up with this:
<img src="http://i1310.photobucket.com/albums/s651/E2GameStudios/ontouched_zps244541c5.jpg" border="0" />
In the example my sprite object name is "LevSel" and the animations associated with that sprite are "Act1toCh1", "Ch1toCh2", etc. I have the Stop Animation set up to prevent the 1st animation from running before any touches happen.
Unfortunately this does not appear to work. What am I missing?