Self awareness and the body image

Abstract

What mental representations give us the sense of our body as a unique object in the world? We investigated this issue in the context of the rubber hand illusion (RHI), an illusion of body image in which a prosthetic hand brushed synchronously, but not asynchronously, with one's own hand is perceived as actually being one's hand. We conducted a large-scale study of the RHI, and used psychometric analysis to reveal the structure of the subjective experience of the experience of embodiment (Longo et al., 2008, Cognition, 107, 978-998). Here, we use this dataset to investigate the relation between incorporation of a rubber hand into the body image and the perceived similarity between the participant's hand and the rubber hand. Objective similarity (as measured by skin luminance, hand shape, and third-person similarity ratings) did not appear to influence participants' experience of the RHI. Conversely, incorporation of the rubber hand into the body image did affect the similarity that participants perceived between their own hand and the rubber hand. Participants who had experienced the RHI perceived their hand and the rubber hand as significantly more similar than participants who had not experienced the illusion. That is, embodiment lead to perceived similarity, but perceived similarity did not lead to embodiment.Furthermore, similarity ratings following the illusion were selectively correlated with some components of embodiment, but not with others. These results suggest an important role of a mental body image in the perception of the relation between the self and others.Self Awareness and the Body Image

The Sense of Embodiment in Virtual Reality

“…Generally, a virtual body representation with different morphology with respect to one's own biological properties (e.g., morphological appearance, number of limbs, size), would probably have psychological or even motor consequences. In the studies of Longo, Schuur, Kammers, Tsakiris, and Haggard (2009) and Tsakiris (2008), such consequences were indeed reported. Additionally, a virtual body with characteristics associated with certain social stereotypes but different from those of the biologi-cal body (e.g., with respect to race, gender, or age), could result in the participant engaging in behaviors associated with those stereotypes.…”

Individual differences in the rubber-hand illusion: Predicting self-reports of people's personal experiences

“…Indeed, our analysis indicates that the 22 self-report items tap into a single dimension only. Our instrument, however, did not completely overlap with the one used by Longo et al (2008Longo et al ( , 2009 which also contained statements regarding the loss of one's own concealed hand (e.g., it seemed like my own hand had disappeared). Recent research suggests that incorporation of a fake hand into the body image and changes in the perception of one's own hand might indeed be independent consequences of the rubber-hand illusion (cf.…”

What Is It Like to Have a Body?

“…This suggests that some form of 'body model' serves as a perceptual filter allowing certain things to become incorporated while filtering out others. Interestingly, though, similarity of skin colour between the participant's hand and the rubber hand has no reliable effect (Holmes et al, 2006;Longo et al, 2009b). This suggests that the body model is relatively generic, consistent with anything that looks like a body regardless of whether it looks like my body.…”

“…Indeed, visual characteristics of the rubber hand, such as skin colour (Holmes, Snijders, & Spence, 2006;Longo et al, 2009b) have surprisingly little influence on the illusion. Similarly, participants can easily be made to experience embodiment over graphical arms in VR (Slater et al, 2008;Perez-Marcos et al, 2009).…”