Psychological and physiological evidence for an initial 'Rough Sketch' calculation of personal space

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Virtual Reality Research

Background:

• Personal space is the buffer zone around individuals, intrusion into which causes discomfort.
• The exact relationship between distance and discomfort, and the brain mechanisms for recognizing conspecifics within personal space, are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate personal space preferences and discomfort responses to real humans and virtual avatars.
• To explore the underlying neural computations of personal space using psychological and physiological measures.

Main Methods:

• Utilized "stop distance" procedures to measure personal space thresholds in response to humans and virtual reality avatars.
• Assessed psychological (discomfort ratings) and physiological (skin conductance) responses at various distances from the stimuli.
• Analyzed discomfort-by-distance functions using a power law model.

Main Results:

• Discomfort responses to both real humans and avatars followed a power law as a function of distance.
• These findings suggest that the brain initially processes personal space through a "rough sketch" mechanism.
• This mechanism responds broadly to human-like stimuli, not just actual humans.

Conclusions:

• The brain's computation of personal space involves an initial, generalized response to human-like visual stimuli.
• Similar processing mechanisms may be involved in other brain functions that react to both real and simulated human body parts.
• Virtual reality is a viable tool for studying fundamental aspects of human perception and social interaction.