Perception of Our Own Body Influences Self-Concept and Self-Incoherence Impairs Episodic Memory

Tacikowski, Paweł; Weijs, Marieke Lieve; Ehrsson, H. Henrik

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.101429

Cited by 35 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(115 reference statements)

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“…The SCR to bodily threat, a common implicit measure of body ownership, has previously shown to be stronger after synchronous than asynchronous stimulation in the rubber hand illusion and first-person perspective video-based full body illusions (i.e. Armel & Ramachandran, 2003;Petkova & Ehrsson, 2008;Petkova et al, 2011;Preuss & Ehrsson, 2019;Tacikowski et al, 2020). However, while we could evidence threat response in general, these responses were not modulated by experimental condition, which is in line with other studies using virtual avatars (Kokkinara & Slater, 2014;Slater et al, 2010).…”

Section: Sense Of Body Ownershipsupporting

confidence: 91%

Development of the Bodily Self: Effects of Visuomotor Synchrony and Visual Appearance on Virtual Embodiment in Children and Adults

Weijs¹,

Macartney²,

Daum³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily afferents and prior beliefs. Evidence from studies using paradigms such as the rubber hand illusion and full body illusion suggests changes in the integration of visuotactile bodily signals throughout childhood. Here, we extended this line of research by assessing how bottom-up visuomotor synchrony and expectancy, modulated by visual appearance of virtual avatars, contribute to embodiment in children. We compared responses to a first-person perspective virtual full body illusion from 8-12-year-old children and adults, while manipulating synchrony of the avatar’s movements (synchronous, 0.5 s, 1 s delay compared to the participant’s movements), and appearance of the avatar (human or skeleton). We measured embodiment with both subjective questionnaires and objective skin conductance responses to virtual threat. Results showed that children experienced ownership for the virtual avatar in a similar way to adults, which was reduced with increasing asynchrony, and for the skeleton avatar as compared to the human avatar. This modulation of ownership was not reflected in the skin conductance responses, which were equally high in all experimental conditions and only showed a modulation of repetition by age. Contrastingly, in children, the subjective experience of agency was less affected by the dampening effects of visuomotor asynchrony or reduced human likeness, and overall higher. These findings suggest that children can easily embody a virtual avatar, but that different aspects of embodiment develop at different rates, which could have important implications for applications of embodied virtual reality.

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Section: Sense Of Body Ownershipsupporting

confidence: 91%

Development of the Bodily Self: Effects of Visuomotor Synchrony and Visual Appearance on Virtual Embodiment in Children and Adults

Weijs¹,

Macartney²,

Daum³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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show abstract

“…We had no reason to think that 1S could produce the strongest illusion (see introduction ), and since previous studies have demonstrated successful SCRs using a non-stimulated body part, albeit a body part that was stimulated in another experimental condition [ 7 ], we did not anticipate any issues relating to the choice of the left leg as the threat-targeted body part. The threat-evoked SCR procedure has successfully been used in many full-body illusion studies contrasting synchronous and asynchronous conditions [ 7 , 16 , 17 , 25 , 29 , 73 ] and in numerous works on the rubber hand illusion [ 27 , 74 – 76 ]. The main difference between these studies and the present study is the choice of body part in which to present the knife theat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each threat-evoked SCR was quantified as the magnitude in micro-siemens, μS, from the minimum to the maximum skin conductance level of the largest peak observed to onset a maximum of five seconds following the onset of the knife presentation [ 7 , 46 ]. Because these characteristic waveforms represent phasic changes in electrodermal activity that are time-locked to the onset of each knife stimulus, they are a well-founded representation of threat-evoked physiological responses [ 45 , 47 ] and, in turn, allow for a quantification of illusory ownership of the mannequin’s body [ 7 , 27 , 29 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The contribution of stimulating multiple body parts simultaneously to the illusion of owning an entire artificial body

O'Kane

Ehrsson

2021

PLoS ONE

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The full-body ownership illusion exploits multisensory perception to induce a feeling of ownership of an entire artificial body. Although previous research has shown that synchronous visuotactile stimulation of a single body part is sufficient for illusory ownership of the whole body, the effect of combining multisensory stimulation across multiple body parts remains unknown. Therefore, 48 healthy adults participated in a full-body ownership illusion with conditions involving synchronous (illusion) or asynchronous (control) visuotactile stimulation to one, two, or three body parts simultaneously (2×3 design). We used questionnaires to isolate illusory ownership of five specific body parts (left arm, right arm, trunk, left leg, right leg) from the full-body ownership experience and sought to test not only for increased ownership in synchronous versus asynchronous conditions but also for potentially varying degrees of full-body ownership illusion intensity related to the number of body parts stimulated. Illusory full-body ownership and all five body-part ownership ratings were significantly higher following synchronous stimulation than asynchronous stimulation (p-values < .01). Since non-stimulated body parts also received significantly increased ownership ratings following synchronous stimulation, the results are consistent with an illusion that engages the entire body. Furthermore, we noted that ownership ratings for right body parts (which were often but not always stimulated in this experiment) were significantly higher than ownership ratings for left body parts (which were never stimulated). Regarding the effect of stimulating multiple body parts simultaneously on explicit full-body ownership ratings, there was no evidence of a significant main effect of the number of stimulations (p = .850) or any significant interaction with stimulation synchronicity (p = .160), as assessed by linear mixed modelling. Instead, median ratings indicated a moderate affirmation (+1) of an illusory full-body sensation in all three synchronous conditions, a finding mirrored by comparable full-body illusion onset times. In sum, illusory full-body ownership appears to be an ‘all-or-nothing’ phenomenon and depends upon the synchronicity of visuotactile stimulation, irrespective of the number of stimulated body parts.

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“…For example, attitudes toward other people change after illusory ownership of their bodies 29 , emotional feelings of social fear 42 and body dissatisfaction 32,33 can be modulated by the full-body ownership illusion, and the encoding of episodic memories depends on the embodied firstperson perspective 57 . Even beliefs about own personality characteristics 58 , the recognition of one's own face [59][60][61] , the style of one's own behavior 62 , and implicit associations with the past-self 45 are flexibly adjusted based on the ongoing perception of one's own body. With regard to gender, it has been shown that it is possible to induce the body-sex-change illusion 24,43 and that female participants who looked at male avatars from a first-person perspective improved their working memory performance during a stereotype-threatening situation 63 ; however, the latter finding needs to be interpreted with caution, as there was no conclusive evidence that the participants felt ownership of the avatar's body.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fluidity of gender identity induced by illusory body-sex change

Tacikowski

Fust

Ehrsson

2020

Sci Rep

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Gender identity is a collection of thoughts and feelings about one's own gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth. How this sense is linked to the perception of one's own masculine or feminine body remains unclear. Here, in a series of three behavioral experiments conducted on a large group of control volunteers (N = 140), we show that a perceptual illusion of having the opposite-sex body is associated with a shift toward a more balanced identification with both genders and less gender-stereotypical beliefs about own personality characteristics, as indicated by subjective reports and implicit behavioral measures. These findings demonstrate that the ongoing perception of one's own body affects the sense of one's own gender in a dynamic, robust, and automatic manner. Gender identity is a collection of thoughts and feelings about one's own gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth 1-5. This multifaceted, subjective sense of being male, female, both, or neither occurs in our conscious self-awareness, but the associated perceptions and beliefs can also be largely implicit 3-5. In the past, gender identity was conceptualized as a male-female dichotomy; however, current theories consistently postulate that gender identity is a spectrum of associations with both genders 1,3-6. There is also a general consensus in the field that gender identity is determined by multiple factors, such as person's genes, hormones, patterns of behaviors, or social interactions 4-8 ; and that the sense of own gender (e.g., "I'm male") is closely linked to one's beliefs about males and females in general (e.g., "males are competitive"), as well as to the associated beliefs about own personality ("I am competitive") 1,3,6. The specific content of such beliefs and their strength contribute to what it means for a given person to be male or female in a given sociocultural context, which in some cases hinders the realization of one's full personal or professional potential. Although gender identity has a profound impact on our lives, little is known about how this sense is formed or maintained. A better understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of gender identity is also important in the context of gender dysphoria (DSM-5 9 ; gender incongruence ICD-11 10), which is characterized by the prolonged and clinically relevant distress that some transgender individuals experience due to inconsistency between their sex assigned at birth and their subjective sense of gender. Various observations suggest that gender identity and the perception of one's own body are tightly connected. For example, people with gender dysphoria (see above) often avoid looking in the mirror, hide their bodies under loose-fitting clothes, and seek hormonal and/or surgical procedures to adjust their physical appearance to meet their subjective sense of own gender 6,11,12. Moreover, among individuals whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth, mastectomy and androgen deprivation cancer therapies, which both ...

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Perception of Our Own Body Influences Self-Concept and Self-Incoherence Impairs Episodic Memory

Cited by 35 publications

References 73 publications

Development of the Bodily Self: Effects of Visuomotor Synchrony and Visual Appearance on Virtual Embodiment in Children and Adults

Development of the Bodily Self: Effects of Visuomotor Synchrony and Visual Appearance on Virtual Embodiment in Children and Adults

The contribution of stimulating multiple body parts simultaneously to the illusion of owning an entire artificial body

Fluidity of gender identity induced by illusory body-sex change

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