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Background: The distance from the patient is a crucial factor in the communication with patients. The distance between patients and pharmacists varies depending on several factors. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between comfort distance and patients' physical condition and mood by measuring this distance at a chemotherapy center. Methods: A total of 114 patients were surveyed regarding their physical condition and mood. The distance at which the patients were best able to talk to the pharmacists was measured. For comfort distance measurement, the pharmacists were instructed to approach or move away from the patients. Results: The correlation between physical condition, mood, and comfort distance was examined in both male and female patients, and no significant correlation was found; however, there was a strong correlation between physical condition and mood in female patients. We looked at correlations by further dividing patients into those over and under 65 years of age and found a slight correlation with comfort distance in women under 65. They tended to shorten the distance when they felt well and lengthen the distance when they felt not well. Conclusions: No correlation was found between physical condition or mood and comfort distance in male or female. A slight correlation was observed when age was included; however, the results were not satisfactory. By directly measuring the distance in actual patients, we obtained an actual measurement of the comfort distance that synthesized the patient's condition and various backgrounds during chemotherapy, providing a foothold for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies report a preference for larger comfortable interpersonal distance (CIPD) in individuals with child maltreatment (CM) when being approached by others. Yet, research on approaching others, as opposed to being approached, as well as on potential effects of social anxiety and depression is lacking. We investigated if CM and depressive symptoms influence CIPD and if social anxiety mediates the possible association of CM and CIPD when approaching a female stranger. One hundred ten participants with CM (CM) and 58 participants without CM (non‐CM) experiences performed the stop‐distance paradigm and stopped first when feeling uncomfortable (D1) and again when feeling very uncomfortable (D2). CM experiences were associated with a preference for larger CIPD, independent of depressive symptoms. All CM subtypes were associated with a larger D2. The relationship between CM and CIPD was partially mediated by social anxiety. These novel findings can help to develop interventions strengthening socially relevant skills and processes in those affected by CM, targeting alterations in social anxiety and depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The study investigated interpersonal distance in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), focussing on the role of other's facial expression and morphology, also assessing physiological and subjective responses. Method: Twenty‐nine patients with AN and 30 controls (CTL) were exposed to virtual characters either with an angry, neutral, or happy facial expression or with an overweight, normal‐weight, or underweight morphology presented either in the near or far space while we recorded electrodermal activity. Participants had to judge their preferred interpersonal distance with the characters and rated them in terms of valence and arousal. Results: Unlike CTL, patients with AN exhibited heightened electrodermal activity for morphological stimuli only, when presented in the near space. They also preferred larger and smaller interpersonal distances with overweight and underweight characters respectively, although rating both negatively. Finally, and similar to CTL, they preferred larger interpersonal distance with angry than neutral or happy characters. Discussion: Although patients with AN exhibited behavioural response to emotional stimuli similar to CTL, they lacked corresponding physiological response, indicating emotional blunting towards emotional social stimuli. Moreover, they showed distinct behavioural and physiological adjustments in response to body shape, confirming the specific emotional significance attached to body shape. Highlights: Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) show a regulation of interpersonal distances to social emotional stimuli similar to healthy controls (CTL) but lack the corresponding physiological response.Patients with AN, not CTL, prefer shorter interpersonal distance with underweight social stimuli and larger interpersonal distance with overweight ones and show increased physiological response to both of them.Patients with AN show a bias towards morphological rather than emotional cues when processing information to optimise social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual processing differences seen in autism often impede individuals' visual perception of the social world. In particular, many autistic people exhibit poor face recognition. Here, we sought to determine whether autistic adults also show impaired perception of dyadic social interactions—a class of stimulus thought to engage face‐like visual processing. Our focus was the perception of interpersonal distance. Participants completed distance change detection tasks, in which they had to make perceptual decisions about the distance between two actors. On half of the trials, participants judged whether the actors moved closer together; on the other half, whether they moved further apart. In a nonsocial control task, participants made similar judgments about two grandfather clocks. We also assessed participants' face recognition ability using standardized measures. The autistic and nonautistic observers showed similar levels of perceptual sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance when viewing social interactions. As expected, however, the autistic observers showed clear signs of impaired face recognition. Despite putative similarities between the visual processing of faces and dyadic social interactions, our results suggest that these two facets of social vision may dissociate. Lay Summary: The visual processing differences seen in autism often impede individuals' visual perception of the social world. It has recently been suggested that pairs of individuals shown facing each other—so‐called "facing dyads"—engage a form of visual processing similar to that recruited by faces. Given that many autistic people experience difficulties when asked to identify faces, we reasoned that autistic individuals may also make less accurate judgments about facing dyads. We examined whether groups of autistic and nonautistic participants differed in their ability to judge interpersonal distance—a key visual feature of facing dyads. Contrary to our hypothesis, the autistic and nonautistic participants displayed similar ability to detect changes in interpersonal distance. As expected, however, our autistic participants showed worse face recognition than our nonautistic participants. These findings suggest that the visual processing of faces may be selectively impaired in autism without affecting the perception of facing dyads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social interactions are often shaped by the space we prefer to maintain between us and others, that is, interpersonal distance. Being too distant or too close to a stranger can often be perceived as odd, and lead to atypical social interactions. This calibration of appropriate interpersonal distance thus constitutes an important social skill. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, hereafter autism) often experience difficulties with this skill, and anecdotal accounts suggest atypical interpersonal distances in their social interactions. In the current study, we systematically measured interpersonal distance in individuals with autism using immersive virtual reality (IVR) to recreate a naturalistic interaction with a full body avatar of a similar age. Participants observed their own virtual body in first‐person perspective, and the other avatar in two tasks: in the first task, they approached the other avatar (active), in the second one they were approached by the other avatar (passive). Two groups of neurotypical and autistic adults, performed both tasks. Autistic adults showed greater interpersonal distance when compared to non‐autistic adults. Additionally, the difference between the passive and active conditions was smaller for non‐autistic compared to autistic adults. Across the full sample, greater interpersonal distance was associated with higher autism‐related traits. This study provides systematic evidence for greater interpersonal distance in autistic adults using a paradigm with high ecological validity and can be useful in informing the design of appropriate environmental adjustments for shared spaces. Lay Summary: Social interactions are often shaped by the space we prefer to maintain between us and others, that is, interpersonal distance. We used immersive virtual reality to measure interpersonal distance, where participants either approached or were approached by a virtual character. All participants preferred larger interpersonal distances when they were approached versus when they approached themselves. Autistic adults preferred a larger interpersonal distance compared to non‐autistic adults. These results can inform the design of appropriate environments (e.g., public spaces) for autistic individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal distance plays an important role in human social interaction. With the increasing usage of virtual reality in social interaction, people's interpersonal distance in virtual space attracts great attention. It remains unclear whether and to what extent human‐required interpersonal distance is altered by crowded virtual scenes. In this study, we manipulated crowd density in virtual environments and used the classical stop‐distance paradigm to measure required interpersonal distances at different crowd densities. We found that people's required interpersonal distance decreased with increased social crowdedness but not with physical crowdedness. Moreover, the decrease of two types of interpersonal distance was associated with the globally averaged crowd density rather than local crowd density. The reduction is not due to the imitation of other virtual humans in the crowd. Moreover, we developed a model to describe the quantitative relationships between the crowdedness of the environment and the required interpersonal distance. Our finding provides insights into designing user‐friendly virtual humans in metaverse virtual worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Eating disorders have a considerable influence on social contacts. The avoidance towards the own body may result in the avoidance of others. Previous research has found a preference for larger interaction distances in individuals with eating disorders (ED) as compared to control participants (CG). We aimed to replicate these findings and to investigate whether the body weight of the interactant moderates the effect. Method: We recruited a female sample with mixed ED subtypes (n = 21) and a female CG (n = 28). Participants were immersed in a virtual environment and engaged in a number of fictitious social interactions. They approached a virtual person until a comfortable distance for interaction was reached. The approached virtual persons differed with respect to body weight in five levels (underweight to obese). Results: Our results indicate that interpersonal distance varies as a U‐shaped function of the avatar's body weight, and that higher levels of body avoidance, present in ED individuals, magnify this effect. Conclusions: We discuss our results with regard to the role of perspective and disgust to provide a useful framework and to motivate future studies in the domain of body avoidance in social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is correlated with a number of aspects of aggressive behavior in men. Observers appear to be able to assess aggressiveness from male fWHR, but implications for interpersonal distance preferences have not yet been determined. This study utilized a novel computerized stop-distance task to examine interpersonal space preferences of female participants who envisioned being approached by a man; men's faces photographed posed in neutral facial expressions were shown in increasing size to mimic approach. We explored the effect of the men's fWHR, their behavioral aggression (measured previously in a computer game), and women's ratings of the men's aggressiveness, attractiveness, and masculinity on the preferred interpersonal distance of 52 German women. Hierarchical linear modelling confirmed the relationship between the fWHR and trait judgements (ratings of aggressiveness, attractiveness, and masculinity). There were effects of fWHR and actual aggression on the preferred interpersonal distance, even when controlling statistically for men's and the participants' age. Ratings of attractiveness, however, was the most influential variable predicting preferred interpersonal distance. Our results extend earlier findings on fWHR as a cue of aggressiveness in men by demonstrating implications for social interaction. In conclusion, women are able to accurately detect aggressiveness in emotionally neutral facial expressions, and adapt their social distance preferences accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social interactions, humans are expected to regulate interpersonal distance in response to the emotion displayed by others. Yet, the neural mechanisms implicated in approach-avoidance tendencies to distinct emotional expressions have not been fully described. Here, we investigated the neural systems implicated in regulating the distance to different emotions, and how they vary as a function of empathy. Twenty-three healthy participants assessed for psychopathic traits underwent fMRI scanning while they viewed approaching and withdrawing angry, fearful, happy, sad and neutral faces. Participants were also asked to set the distance to those faces on a computer screen, and to adjust the physical distance from the experimenter outside the scanner. Participants kept the greatest distances from angry faces, and shortest from happy expressions. This was accompanied by increased activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, inferior frontal gyrus, and temporoparietal junction for angry and happy expressions relative to the other emotions. Irrespective of emotion, longer distances were kept from approaching faces, which was associated with increased activation in the amygdala and insula, as well as parietal and prefrontal regions. Amygdala activation was positively correlated with greater preferred distances to angry, fearful and sad expressions. Moreover, participants scoring higher on coldhearted psychopathic traits (lower empathy) showed reduced amygdala activation to sad expressions. These findings elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying social approach-avoidance, and how they are related to variations in empathy. Hum Brain Mapp 38:1492-1506, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing as a lens the interpersonal implications of physical interpersonal distances in social contexts (a set of variables present during the professional discourse during the 1960s and 1970s, to then fade away), this article explores interactive process displayed by the protagonic couple in Bela Bartok's opera 'Bluebeard Castle,' an exercise aimed at underlining the value of maintaining proxemics as an explicit level of observation for clinical practice and interpersonal research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's perceptions are often distorted in a way that aligns with their desires and goals. We argue that having a goal to affiliate changes the perception of interpersonal distance in a way that may help to fulfil this affiliation goal. As other people are goal-relevant when having an affiliation goal, we expected that people with affiliation goals would estimate the distance between themselves and another person as smaller than people with no affiliation goals. In two studies, we manipulated affiliation goals by priming participants with affiliation or control words. Our main dependent variable was the estimated interpersonal distance between themselves and the experimenter. Results showed that participants primed with affiliation estimated the interpersonal distance as smaller compared with participants primed with control words. We did not obtain reliable differences between the affiliation and control conditions on other distance and height estimations. Our results suggest that having or not having affiliation goals influences people's perception of the distance between them and other people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]