Auditory-induced body distortions in children and adults

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that body-representations can be altered by dynamic changes in sound. in the so-called "auditory Pinocchio illusion" participants feel their finger to be longer when the action of pulling their finger is paired with a rising pitch. Here, we investigated whether preschool children-an age group in which multisensory body-representations are still fine-tuning-are also sensitive to this illusion. In two studies, sixty adult and sixty child participants heard sounds rising or falling in pitch while the experimenter concurrently pulled or pressed their index finger on a vertical (Experiment 1) or horizontal axis (Experiment 2). Results showed that the illusion was subjected to axis and age: both adults and children reported their finger to be longer in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. However, while in adults the feeling of finger elongation corresponded to a recalibration of the fingertip's felt position upwards, this was not the case in children, who presented a dissociation between the feeling of finger elongation and the perceived fingertip position. Our results reveal that the 'auditory Pinocchio illusion' is constrained to the vertical dimension and suggest that multisensory interactions differently contribute to subjective feelings and sense of position depending on developmental stage.

Bodies moving with sound: Effects of pitch and musical sounds on body-representations

“…When brief sounds rising in pitch are paired and presented synchronously with the action of oneself pulling on one's occluded fingertip can lead to participants feel and estimate their finger to be longer [11] suggesting influences of sound on proprioception. This illusion was replicated both in adults and pre-school children for passive finger pulling [39].…”

“…The first study [11] reported an "auditory Pinocchio"' illusion, in which participants feel and estimate their finger to be longer, elicited by presenting brief sounds rising in pitch with the action of oneself pulling on one's occluded fingertip. This illusion was then replicated [39] both in adults and preschool children, when the experimenter, rather than the participants themselves, pulled the finger of the participant, thus suggesting that the effects of sound on the proprioception of one's fingertip can take place both under passive and active touch conditions. Nevertheless, before the present study, it was unclear whether the effect of sounds changing in pitch on proprioception requires "anchoring" those sounds through tactile cues, as in the case of the "auditory Pinocchio"' illusion.…”

“…Dissociation between implicit and explicit body-representation measures is frequently observed in the literature [9,11,13,106]. For instance, in one of the studies on the "auditory Pinocchio" illusion it was found that preschool children, differently from adults, showed effects only on subjective feelings but not in their sense of finger position, suggesting that multisensory interactions contribute differently to subjective feelings and sense of position and depending on developmental stage [39].…”

“…Three auditory stimuli were used, drawing on previous studies by [11,39]. They consisted of pure tones (1300-ms duration and 44.1-kHz sample rate) with ascending ("Tone_up", 600 to 1200 Hz), descending ("Tone_down" 1200 to 600 Hz) or constant ("Tone_constant", 600 Hz) frequency (see Figure 1).…”

Motor Variability in Complex Gesture Learning: Effects of Movement Sonification and Musical Background

“…Using sound as augmented feedback, in particular movement sonification in contrast to an auditory alarm 2 , has been widely explored in fundamental studies of motor learning, and in specific applications: sports, medicine, pedagogy and performing arts. Movement sonification can be seen as a subfield of sonification research and interactive sound design [31] that explores how sound and music can carry information to users, change perception (from either a first-or third-person perceptive) [11,26,51,55] and more generally increase motivation for certain tasks. From a technological point of view, movement sonification shares methods and technologies with communities 3 focusing on music and performing arts where bodily movements and gestures represent an important theme, but not movement learning [5].…”