Some Adults After Childhood Maltreatment Prefer More Space and Less Touch

Although childhood trauma reliably correlates with subsequent social dysfunction, mechanisms connecting these phenomena remain unclear. These investigators focused on interpersonal space comfort zones and reactions to fast and slow tactile stimuli in 92 medication-free adults (64 women; mean age, 28), who were grouped by high, medium, and low childhood maltreatment histories.

First, participants rated their ease at various distances from examiners. Then they underwent functional MRIs and rated their reactions to trials of being touched by hand at fast or slow speeds (~20 or ~5 cm/second) via steady, uniform pressure applied over 20 cm of their shins (100 trials over 20 minutes).

Participants with high compared with low maltreatment history pr…