Personal space regulation in childhood autism: Effects of social interaction and person's perspective

Abstract

Studies in children with Typical Development (TD) and with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) revealed that autism affects the personal space regulation, influencing both its size (permeability) and its changes depending on social interaction (flexibility). Here, we investigate how the nature of social interaction (Cooperative vs. Uncooperative) and the person perspective influence permeability and flexibility of interpersonal distance. Moreover, we tested whether the deficit observed in ASD children, reflects the social impairment (SI) in daily interactions. The stop-distance paradigm was used to measure the preferred distance between the participant and an unfamiliar adult (first-person perspective, Experiment 1), and between two other people (third-person perspective, Experiment 2). Interpersonal distance was measured before and after the interaction with a confederate. The Wing Subgroups Questionnaire was used to evaluate SI in everyday activities, and each ASD participant was accordingly assigned either to the lower (children with low social impairment [low-SI ASD]), or to the higher SI group (children with high social impairment [high-SI ASD]). We observed larger interpersonal distance (permeability) in both ASD groups compared to TD children. Moreover, depending on the nature of social interaction, a modulation of interpersonal distance (flexibility) was observed in TD children, both from the first- and third-person perspective. Similar findings were found in low-SI but not in high-SI ASD children, in Experiment 1. Conversely, in Experiment 2, no change was observed in both ASD groups. These findings reveal that SI severity and a person's perspective may account for the deficit observed in autism when flexibility, but not permeability, of personal space is considered. Autism Res 2017, 10: 144-154. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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

“…Indeed, an array of recent observations indicates that PPS is not only heavily influenced by external or environmental conditions, but also by personality traits such as anxiety (Sambo and Iannetti, 2013) or claustrophobia (Lourenco et al, 2011). Similarly, theoretical postulations suggest that the representation of PPS may play an under-appreciated role in psychopathology (Candini et al, 2017;Noel et al, 2017). Thus, the results reported here suggest that function fitting coupled with immersion in a realistic environment and the presentation of multiple cues of information pertaining to the external environment may be best suited for future individual differences studies of PPS.…”

Invisible body illusion modulates interpersonal space

“…Available evidence suggests that IPS is modulated by higher order psychological and social factors concerning personality characteristics 2 , perception of social context 36 , and the attitude toward the interacting parts 5, 6, 9 . In the current study, in light of recent evidence emphasizing the importance of one’s own body representation in modulating interpersonal attitude 15–17, 20, 22 , we investigated whether a change in one’s own body representation can modify social IPS.…”

“…For instance, recent studies have shown that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have an altered IPS representation, preferring or larger 5, 6 or closer 51, 52 comfort-distances. People with social anxiety show an abnormal IPS too 8, 53 .…”

“…The spatial extent of IPS may vary across culture 3 and its boundaries are regulated and constantly negotiated according to the context and emotional states of individuals 4 . For instance, IPS may reduce after a cooperative social interaction 5, 6 , or after inducing a positive emotional experience 7 . Thus, studies on IPS have predominantly focused on how social space is modulated by high-order social and cognitive factors concerning the perception of the context or the attitude toward the interacting parts 8–13 .…”

Touch or touchless?

“…In addition, there are two additional reasons that support the goal of understanding interaction of persons with special abilities with large displays: (i) different kinds of interaction may impose a different distance of users from displays; (ii) the specific abilities of special persons may modulate their peripersonal space. In particular, children with ASD are known to be reluctant to interact with others at close distance, and their peripersonal space is significantly enlarged as compared to children with typical development [10].…”