如何将Concrete5值中的Tags属性分解为数组？

I get the values of my Tags attribute and try to explode them into an array using the PHP explode function:

$test = explode(' ', $p->getCollectionAttributeValue($atHandle));
print_r($test);

When I echo out the value, it seems to be delimited by a space, but when I try to explode the value using space as the delimiter it fails to separate the values.

Any thoughts on what delimiter is being used for tags?

The function getCollectionAttributeValue('tags') actually returns an object instead of an array.