Humans must ground the perception of one’s body in a mental representation to move in space and interact with objects. This representation can be temporarily altered artificially. In the Full-Body Illusion (FBI), participants see a virtual (or filmed) body receiving a tactile stimulation. When participants receive touches on their body similarly to the seen one (i.e., homologous location and synchronous timing), they embody the seen alien body. While the subjective embodiment of alien bodies of different sizes has been already manipulated with the FBI, it remains unexplored whether the body-metric perception is impacted too. We first developed a new setup for the FBI using 360° videos to favour the embodiment. The FBI was induced for bodies of three sizes adopting anatomical and non-anatomical viewpoints, and we measured the subjective embodiment. The results suggest that humans can embody normal size or bigger bodies seen from anatomical viewpoints, but not smaller ones. We then investigated if the FBI modulates the body-metric representation. We found that the resized bodies' vision affects the perception of one’s body-metric representation, but this was independent of the embodiment, suggesting that the FBI alters the body representation at different levels with a specific impact.

Tosi, G., Maravita, A., Romano, D. (2022). I am the metre: The representation of one’s body size affects the perception of tactile distances on the body. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 75(4 ( April 1, 2022)), 583-597 [10.1177/17470218211044488].

I am the metre: The representation of one’s body size affects the perception of tactile distances on the body

Tosi, Giorgia
Primo
;
Maravita, Angelo;Romano, Daniele
Ultimo
2022

Abstract

Humans must ground the perception of one’s body in a mental representation to move in space and interact with objects. This representation can be temporarily altered artificially. In the Full-Body Illusion (FBI), participants see a virtual (or filmed) body receiving a tactile stimulation. When participants receive touches on their body similarly to the seen one (i.e., homologous location and synchronous timing), they embody the seen alien body. While the subjective embodiment of alien bodies of different sizes has been already manipulated with the FBI, it remains unexplored whether the body-metric perception is impacted too. We first developed a new setup for the FBI using 360° videos to favour the embodiment. The FBI was induced for bodies of three sizes adopting anatomical and non-anatomical viewpoints, and we measured the subjective embodiment. The results suggest that humans can embody normal size or bigger bodies seen from anatomical viewpoints, but not smaller ones. We then investigated if the FBI modulates the body-metric representation. We found that the resized bodies' vision affects the perception of one’s body-metric representation, but this was independent of the embodiment, suggesting that the FBI alters the body representation at different levels with a specific impact.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
Body illusion; body metric; body perception; tactile distance task;
English
24-ago-2021
2022
75
4 ( April 1, 2022)
583
597
none
Tosi, G., Maravita, A., Romano, D. (2022). I am the metre: The representation of one’s body size affects the perception of tactile distances on the body. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 75(4 ( April 1, 2022)), 583-597 [10.1177/17470218211044488].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/325728
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