I Am There … but Not Quite: An Unfaithful Mirror That Reduces Feelings of Ownership and Agency

Abstract

The experience of seeing one's own face in a mirror is a common experience in daily life. Visual feedback from a mirror is linked to a sense of identity. We developed a procedure that allowed individuals to watch their own face, as in a normal mirror, or with specific distortions (lag) for active movement or passive touch. By distorting visual feedback while the face is being observed on a screen, we document an illusion of reduced embodiment. Participants made mouth movements, while their forehead was touched with a pen. Visual feedback was either synchronous (simultaneous) with reality, as in a mirror, or asynchronous (delayed). Asynchronous feedback was exclusive to touch or movement in different conditions and incorporated both in a third condition. Following stimulation, participants rated their perception of the face in the mirror, and perception of their own face, on questions that tapped into agency and ownership. Results showed that perceptions of both agency and ownership were affected by asynchrony. Effects related to agency, in particular, were moderated by individual differences in depersonalisation and auditory hallucination-proneness, variables with theoretical links to embodiment. The illusion presents a new way of investigating the extent to which body representations are malleable.

The Detached Self: Investigating the Effect of Depersonalisation on Self-Bias in the Visual Remapping of Touch

“…This result adds to previous findings indicating a disruption to self-related processing in people with high DP experiences, especially in terms of the integration of internal and external information about the bodily self (Adler et al, 2016;Dewe et al, 2018;Ketay et al, 2014;O'Sullivan et al, 2018). It complements Adler and colleagues' finding of anomalous neural integration of self-related visuotactile stimuli by providing evidence that high DP is reflected behaviourally in (a) the abnormal remapping of self-related information and (b) a lack of any self-related enhancement in sensitivity in tactile detection.…”

“…H2. Building on evidence from previous studies showing impaired selfprocessing in those with high DP (Adler et al, 2016;Dewe et al, 2018;Ketay et al, 2014;O'Sullivan et al, 2018), we hypothesised that our high-DP group would not show the self-bias effect seen in previous VRT studies.…”

“…Further evidence for disrupted bodily self-consciousness in DP comes from two recent studies. O'Sullivan et al (2018) showed that increased DP experiences were predictive of both the sense of ownership over one's face and the extent to which asynchronous visuomotor stimulation disrupted feelings of agency over facial movements. Dewe et al (2018) examined the relationship between different dimensions of DP and autonomic response to threats to self or other.…”

“…However, it is currently unclear whether dissociation from the self is associated with a decrease or an increase in multisensory integration. On the one hand several studies have indicated evidence in favour of disrupted mirroring of tactile and nociceptive stimuli between self and other in those with high depersonalisation (Adler et al, 2016;Dewe et al, 2018;O'Sullivan et al, 2018;Simeon et al, 2000). However, other recent studies on other types of bodily dissociation, e.g., out of body experiences (OBE; Braithwaite et al, 2017) or the use of dissociative drugs (Morgan et al, 2011) suggest a link between other forms of dissociative experiences and wider temporal windows of multisensory integration, reflected in increased integration when stimuli are presented asynchronously.…”

“…H1. Based on evidence of abnormal integration of bodily signals specifically for people who experienced high levels of DP (Dewe et al, 2018;O'Sullivan et al, 2018;Simeon et al, 2000), we hypothesised that those in the high-DP group would show a reduced VRT effect compared to those in the low-DP group, regardless of the face observed.…”