Children’s Responses to the Rubber-Hand Illusion Reveal Dissociable Pathways in Body Representation

Abstract

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The development of multisensory body representation and awareness continues to 10years of age: Evidence from the rubber hand illusion

“…Thus, vision of an appropriately oriented hand 1 is a powerful cue to perceived hand location at 4-9 years. While our data (Cowie et al, 1 In Cowie et al 2013, vision of an appropriately oriented hand is referred to as 'visual-proprioceptive processing'. This is because the effects it has might result from seeing a fake hand, and/ or seeing an object that it is oriented in the same way as one's own felt hand.…”

“…We tested 60 children: thirty 10-to 11-year-olds (M 10.8 yrs, sd 0.3 yrs) and thirty 12-to 13-year-olds (M 13.0 yrs, sd 0.4 yrs). Data are compared with those from Cowie et al (2013), which includes adults and 3 age groups of children (4-to 5-year-olds; 6-to 7-year-olds; 8-to 9-year-olds). While that study identified broad differences between children (4-9 years of age) and adults, here Bodily Self Development 7 we expect to find finer-grained developmental changes in the responses to the illusion (i.e., differences between age groups of children).…”

“…Interestingly, Cowie et al (2013) showed that children of 4 -9 years differ markedly from adults in their responses to this illusion, demonstrating a long period of development in own-body perception and suggesting that these connections between multisensory information and aspects of self-perception may not be fully developed in infancy or even early childhood. Like adults, children's questionnaire and pointing responses were stronger in the synchronous condition.…”

“…Despite these early competencies, recent work suggests that the development of multisensory processing for own-body perception may follow a particularly protracted time course (Begum Ali, Cowie & Bremner, 2014;Cowie, Makin & Bremner, 2013;Bremner, Hill, Pratt, Rigato & Spence, 2013;Pagel, Heed & Röder, 2009;Nardini, Begus & Mareschal, 2012). These studies differ from infant work in that they much more explicitly require participants to locate or identify the self -information which preferential looking studies of course cannot provide.…”

“…Indeed, one study (Nardini et al, 2013) suggests that this adultlike optimal cue weighting did not occur for weighting of visual and proprioceptive cues to hand position until at least 10-12 years. Thus, the present study investigates responses to the illusion during early adolescence (10-11 years and 12-13 years) using methods described in Cowie et al (2013). This allows us to determine the age at which visual reliance on the sight of the hand develops to adult levels, and to examine how this impacts on perceived hand position, perceived touch location, and a subjective sense of ownership of the hand.…”