From the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its most valuable asset. Despite data protection laws, companies trade personal information and often intrude on the privacy of individuals. As a result, consumers feel out of control and lose trust in electronic environments. Technologists and regulators are struggling to develop solutions that meet businesses’ demand for m...

Schizophrenia is associated with subtle abnormalities in day-to-day social behaviors, including a tendency in some patients to "keep their distance" from others in physical space. The neural basis of this abnormality, and related changes in social functioning, is unknown. Here we examined, in schizophrenic patients and healthy control subjects, the functioning of a parietal-frontal network invo...

In the monkey brain, two interconnected cortical areas have distinctive neuronal responses to visual, tactile, and auditory stimuli. These areas are the ventral intraparietal area (VIP) and a polysensory zone in the precentral gyrus (PZ). The multimodal neurons in these areas typically respond to objects touching, near, or looming toward the body surface. Electrical stimulation of these areas e...

The authors introduce the Personal Living Space Cue Inventory (PLSCI), designed to document comprehensively features of personal living spaces (PLSs); common examples of PLSs include rooms in family households, dormitories, or residential centers. The article describes the PLSCI’s development and provides evidence for its reliability and sensitivity. Next, the authors employ case-study comparis...

Dissociation between personal and extrapersonal neglect has rarely been observed in man. In this study we present a case of severe personal neglect in the absence of a deficit for extrapersonal space. An extensive neuropsychological assessment demonstrates the absence of cognitive impairments in visuo-spatial processing and confirms the selective presence of a severe representational deficit of...

We propose to use a model of personal space to initiate communication while passing a human thereby acknowledging that humans are not just a special kind of obstacle to be avoided but potential interaction partners. As a simple form of interaction, our system communicates an apology while closely passing a human. To this end, we present a software architecture that integrates a social-spaces kn...

This article presents the results of a quasi-experimental research project investigating the impact of two different formal learning spaces – a traditional classroom and a technologically enhanced active learning classroom – on instructor behavior, classroom activities, and levels of ontask student behavior at the University of Minnesota. Using time-series data collected as part of a series of ...

How do people use World Wide Web bookmarks? This in-depth empirical study of WWW human factors describes a user's personal Web information space. It is based on interviews of 12 users, a survey of 322 people, a mental maps survey of 27 users, and an analysis of the bookmark files of 56 users and the usage data of 23 users over 6 weeks. The WWW is a complex information space with five defining p...

Fundamental laws governing human mobility have many important applications such as forecasting and controlling epidemics or optimizing transportation systems. These mobility patterns, studied in the context of out of home activity during travel or social interactions with observations recorded from cell phone use or diffusion of money, suggest that in extra-personal space humans follow a high d...

Privacy is a major obstacle preventing the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). As more connected objects become integrated in daily lives, ensuring that people feel comfortable with IoT’s impact on their privacy becomes increasingly important. To date the understanding of users’ perception regarding privacy risks in the connected object space is limited. In this paper we aim to shed lights ...