Edward Hall's long accepted theories of proxemics, developed in the mid-sixties of this century, promoted the idea that culture plays the definitive role in determining how different individuals use personal space. Contact cultures, inhabited by people who are comfortable with touching and close contact, include those of Arabia, Latin America, and Southern Europe, while non-contact cultures--those of Northern Europe, Asia, and India/Pakistan--maintain greater personal space and are less comfortable with touching while conversing. However, new studies have suggested that Hall's categories are too narrow, and that the distance people maintain while conversing and the amount of touching they are comfortable with are influenced by age, sex, relationship, environment, and ethnicity. R. Shuter discovered that Italian males, who are contact oriented, touched a great deal in conversation, but Italian men and women in conversation touched no more and conversed no more closely than non-touching Germans. Moreover, E. Bauer's studies suggested that American blacks are more comfortable invading one another's personal space than American whites, and R. Lerner's and others' studies contend that children who invade personal space are tolerated more than adults who do the same. Future proxemics research might include, among other things, studies on intercultural interactions between contact and non-contact cultures. (Three pages of references are included.) (JC)