Peripersonal and interpersonal space in virtual and real environments: Effects of gender and age

Iachini, Tina; Yann, C.; Frassinetti, Francesca; Senese, Vincenzo Paolo; Galante, Francesco; Ruggiero, Gennaro

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.01.004

Cited by 204 publications

(216 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…This interpretation is corroborated by the fact that a straight-ahead approach, although finishing laterally on the right or left side of the participants, is also perceived as more threatening than a lateral approach. As a whole, these data confirm that peripersonal space represents a safety space where the non-expected presence of conspecifics triggers discomfort (Aiello et al, 1977;Iachini et al, 2014;2016;Lockard et al, 1977;McBride et al, 1965) and negative emotional responses (Evans & Wener, 2007;Kennedy et al, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

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Keeping you at arm’s length: modifying peripersonal space influences interpersonal distance

Quesque

Ruggiero

Mouta

et al. 2016

Psychological Research

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Peripersonal space represents the area around the body where objects are coded in motor terms for the purpose of voluntary goal-directed actions. Previous studies have suggested that peripersonal space is also a safe space linked with our private area, influencing interpersonal space in social contexts. However, whether these two spaces rely on similar embodied processes remains an open issue. In the present study, participants observed a point-light walker (PLW) approaching them from different directions and passing near them at different distances from their right or left shoulder. While approaching, the PLW disappeared at a distance of 2 m and the task for the participants was to estimate if the interpersonal distance, at the time the PLW would have reached their level, was comfortable or not. Between two sessions of comfort judgments, the participants manipulated a 70 cm tool entailing an extension of peripersonal space, or a 10 cm tool entailing no extension of peripersonal space. The results revealed that the comfortable interpersonal distance was larger when the PLW crossed the mid-sagittal plane of the participants than when it approached them laterally, with a concomitant increase of response time. After participants manipulated the long tool, comfortable interpersonal distance increased, but predominantly when the PLW trajectory implied crossing the participants' mid-sagittal plane. This effect was not observed when participants manipulated the short tool. Two control tasks showed that using the long tool modified the reachability (control 1), but not the time to passage (control 2) estimates of PLW stimuli, suggesting that tool use extended peripersonal space without changing perceived visual distances. Overall, the data show that comfortable interpersonal distance is linked to the representation of peripersonal space. As a consequence, increasing peripersonal space through tool use has the immediate consequence that comfortable interpersonal distance from another person also increases, suggesting that interpersonal-comfort space and peripersonal-reaching space share a common motor nature.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

“…In a recent study using immersive virtual reality, Iachini et al (2016) compared reachability and comfort distance from male/female virtual confederates of different age (children, young adults, old adults). These authors found that reachability and comfort distances were both modulated by gender and age.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping you at arm’s length: modifying peripersonal space influences interpersonal distance

Quesque

Ruggiero

Mouta

et al. 2016

Psychological Research

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“…PPS, initially defined as ‘action space’, contains the objects or individuals within reach and is processed differently from extrapersonal space where objects are only perceptually accessible (Coello & Delevoye‐Turrell, ; diPellegrino & Làdavas, ; Rizzolatti, Scandolara, Matelli, & Gentilucci, ). Furthermore, as a safe space, PPS specifies the individual's private area in social contexts (Holmes & Spence, ; Iachini, Coello, Frassinetti, & Ruggiero, ; Iachini et al, ; Quesque et al, ). PPS increases significantly in people with a high level of anxiety (Iachini, Pagliaro, & Ruggiero, ) or with phobias (Lourenco et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, people were shown to perceive as reachable and comfortable exactly the same area when dealing with an object with no social value, and larger than when dealing with human beings (Iachini et al . , , ). Moreover, the proxemics literature has consistently showed that male and female participants differ in their spatial behaviour, with female participants tending to expand the space around their body compared with male participants (Aiello, ; Hayduk, ; Sawada, ; Uzzell & Horne, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception of Peripersonal and Interpersonal Space in Patients with Restrictive‐type Anorexia

Nandrino

Ducro

Iachini

et al. 2017

Euro Eating Disorders Rev

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This study examines whether the perception of peripersonal action-space and interpersonal social-space is modified in patients with restrictive-type anorexia in two experimental conditions using videos. First, participants stopped the video of an approaching stimulus when they felt the distance to be comfortable for interacting with it (first-person perspective). Second, participants stopped the video when an observed individual approaching a stimulus, or being approached by it, was at a comfortable distance (third-person perspective). In the first-person perspective, the results showed an estimation of peripersonal space that did not differ from controls when an object was approaching and an increase in interpersonal space compared with controls when a male or female individual was approaching. In the third-person perspective, both individual-object and individual-individual distances were larger in anorexic patients. These results indicate a specific deficit in adjusting interpersonal distances in both the first-person and third-person perspectives. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

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“…Evolutionarily, until very recently, all direct body-objects interactions have been experienced within a physical PPS. However, as human interactions are increasingly occurring not within the real, but also within virtual or mixed realities, it is interesting to study and characterize how PPS is represented in VR (see Iachini et al, 2016, for a recent delineation of interpersonal space in virtual and real environments). Here, we propose and demonstrate that it is possible to delineate and measure a representation of PPS within virtual and mixed reality (MR) environments.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Peripersonal Space: An Index of Multisensory Body–Environment Interactions in Real, Virtual, and Mixed Realities

et al. 2018

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Human-environment interactions normally occur in the physical milieu and thus by medium of the body and within the space immediately adjacent to and surrounding the body, the peripersonal space (PPS). However, human interactions increasingly occur with or within virtual environments, and hence novel approaches and metrics must be developed to index human-environment interactions in virtual reality (VR). Here, we present a multisensory task that measures the spatial extent of human PPS in real, virtual, and augmented realities. We validated it in a mixed reality (MR) ecosystem in which real environment and virtual objects are blended together in order to administer and control visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli in ecologically valid conditions. Within this mixed-reality environment, participants are asked to respond as fast as possible to tactile stimuli on their body, while task-irrelevant visual or audiovisual stimuli approach their body. Results demonstrate that, in analogy with observations derived from monkey electrophysiology and in real environmental surroundings, tactile detection is enhanced when visual or auditory stimuli are close to the body, and not when far from it. We then calculate the location where this multisensory facilitation occurs as a proxy of the boundary of PPS. We observe that mapping of PPS via audiovisual, as opposed to visual alone, looming stimuli results in sigmoidal fits-allowing for the bifurcation between near and far space-with greater goodness of fit. In sum, our approach is able to capture the boundaries of PPS on a spatial continuum, at the individual-subject level, and within a fully controlled and previously laboratory-validated setup, while maintaining the richness and ecological validity of real-life events. The task can therefore be applied to study the properties of PPS in humans and to index the features governing human-environment interactions in virtual or MR. We propose PPS as an ecologically valid and neurophysiologically established metric in the study of the impact of VR and related technologies on society and individuals.

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Peripersonal and interpersonal space in virtual and real environments: Effects of gender and age

Cited by 204 publications

References 55 publications

Keeping you at arm’s length: modifying peripersonal space influences interpersonal distance

Keeping you at arm’s length: modifying peripersonal space influences interpersonal distance

Perception of Peripersonal and Interpersonal Space in Patients with Restrictive‐type Anorexia

Peripersonal Space: An Index of Multisensory Body–Environment Interactions in Real, Virtual, and Mixed Realities

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