Abstract
Personal space has been defined as “the area individuals maintain around themselves into which others cannot intrude without arousing discomfort”. However, the precise relationship between discomfort (or arousal) responses as a function of distance from an observer remains incompletely understood. Also the mechanisms involved in recognizing conspecifics and distinguishing them from other objects within personal space have not been identified. Accordingly, here we measured personal space preferences in response to real humans and human-like avatars (in virtual reality), using well-validated “stop distance” procedures. Based on threshold measurements of personal space, we examined within-subject variations in discomfort-related responses across multiple distances (spanning inside and outside each individual’s personal space boundary), as reflected by psychological (ratings) and physiological (skin conductance) responses to both humans and avatars. We found that the discomfort-by-distance functions for both humans and avatars were closely fit by a power law. These results suggest that the brain computation of visually-defined personal space begins with a ‘rough sketch’ stage, which generates responses to a broad range of human-like stimuli, in addition to humans. Analogous processing mechanisms may underlie other brain functions which respond similarly to both real and simulated human body parts.
Highlights
The widespread recent practice of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly influenced the way we position ourselves relative to others
Heights across human individuals have a certain variability when based on absolute distance—but the variability decreases significantly when height is normalized by the size of other body parts, e.g. arm length[30,31,32]
This study found little or no significant differences between the interpersonal distances measured in response to real and virtual human intruders
Summary
The widespread recent practice of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly influenced the way we position ourselves relative to others. Adding to the inherent challenges in defining this function are the methodological differences among studies, and the limited number of data points used to estimate the shape of the function in several experiments Based on this literature, the primary goal of the current study was to clarify the ‘distance-by-discomfort’ function of personal space processing, in ways that are complementary to prior experiments, in several respects. Prior studies have typically investigated personal space across subjects based on absolute physical distance. Heights across human individuals have a certain variability when based on absolute distance—but the variability decreases significantly when height is normalized by the size of other body parts, e.g. arm length[30,31,32]
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