Babadi Baktash, Dokholyan Katherine, DeTore Nicole R, Tootell Roger B H, Sussman Rachel F, Zapetis Sarah L, Holt Daphne J
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA; Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
Schizophr Res. 2024 Dec;274:158-170. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2024.09.004. Epub 2024 Sep 20.
Prior studies have found that individuals with schizophrenia often have an enlarged "personal space". However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this consistent finding remain unknown.
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.
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.
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.
先前的研究发现，精神分裂症患者通常拥有扩大的“个人空间”。然而，这一一致发现背后的神经认知机制仍不清楚。
采用经过充分验证的停止距离程序，测量患有精神障碍（PD，N = 22）和人口统计学匹配的健康对照（HC，N = 20）个体对人类和虚拟（化身）入侵者的个人空间偏好。在侵入个人空间期间测量生理唤醒和主观不适，并在不同人际距离上进行建模。此外，对参与者进行访谈以评估他们对个人空间偏好的主观意识。
在两组中，对人类和化身的个人空间测量在重复试验中高度相关且可靠，并受入侵者所展示的情绪和性别的影响。PD组的个人空间比HC组更大（所有p < 0.028），并且在PD受试者中，化身入侵者的个人空间大小与阳性症状严重程度显著相关。此外，对个人空间侵入的唤醒反应幅度与受试者和入侵者之间距离的幂（指数）成正比，对于人类（p = 0.026）和化身（p = 0.011）入侵者，PD组（与HC相比）的指数明显更小，表明函数斜率更平缓。最后，参与者对其个人空间行为的许多定性印象与定量结果一致或相关，反映了对个人空间决定因素的一些认识。
这些发现揭示了精神障碍中个人空间调节的完整和改变的方面，以及鉴于个人空间测量的高可靠性，其作为干预客观目标的潜在效用。
