Interpersonal Distance Preferences in Deaf Signers and Hearing Individuals

Interpersonal distance plays a critical role in communication and social interactions. Here we investigated whether deaf individuals that use sign language differ from hearing (non-signer) individuals in their preferred interpersonal distance. Specifically, we asked a group of deaf participants (all signers) and control hearing participants to report their preferred social distance from a stranger using a computer-presented stop-distance paradigm. Results show that deaf participants prefer larger interpersonal distances than hearing individuals. We suggest that preference for a larger interpersonal distance in deaf participants may relate to different factors such as optimization of distance for sign language communication or the feelings of social exclusion that are often reported in individuals with hearing loss. Our experiment reports preliminary data that may pave the way for further research on proxemic behaviour in conditions of hearing loss.