Arousal responses to personal space intrusions in psychotic illness: A virtual reality study.

Schizophr Res

Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA; Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA; The Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. Electronic address:

Published: December 2024

AI Article Synopsis

  • - The study investigated personal space preferences in individuals with psychotic disorders (PD) compared to healthy controls (HC), using a method called the Stop Distance Procedure to measure reactions to both human and virtual intruders.
  • - Results showed that individuals with PD maintained a larger personal space, which correlated with the severity of positive symptoms, while their physiological and subjective reactions to intrusions varied based on the type of intruder.
  • - Researchers concluded that the findings highlight both intact and altered components of personal space regulation in psychotic disorders, suggesting that objective measurements of personal space could be useful for understanding these disorders better.

Article Abstract

Background: Prior studies have found that individuals with schizophrenia often have an enlarged "personal space". However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this consistent finding remain unknown.

Methods: The well-validated Stop Distance Procedure was used to measure the personal space preferences of individuals with psychotic disorders (PD, N = 22) and demographically-matched healthy controls (HC, N = 20) in response to human and virtual (avatar) intruders. Physiological arousal and subjective discomfort were measured during intrusions into personal space and modeled across different interpersonal distances. Additionally, participants were interviewed to assess their subjective awareness of their personal space preferences.

Results: Personal space measurements with humans and avatars were highly correlated and reliable over repeated trials, and influenced by the displayed emotion and gender of the intruders, in both groups. The PD group exhibited a larger personal space than the HC group (all p < 0.028), and the size of personal space with avatar intruders was significantly correlated with positive symptom severity in the PD subjects. Moreover, the magnitude of arousal responses to personal space intrusions was proportional to a power (exponent) of the distance between subjects and intruders, with a significantly smaller exponent in the PD (compared to the HC) for both human (p = 0.026) and avatar (p = 0.011) intruders, indicating a less steep function. Lastly, much of the participants' qualitative impressions of their personal space behaviors were consistent or correlated with the quantitative findings, reflecting some awareness of the determinants of personal space.

Conclusions: These findings reveal both intact and altered aspects of personal space regulation in psychotic disorders, and the potential utility of personal space measurements, given their high reliability, to serve as objective targets of interventions.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2024.09.004DOI Listing

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