Abstract

How people mentally represent their body appearance (i.e., body image perception - BIP) does not always match their actual body. BIP distortions can lead to a detriment in physical and emotional health. Recent works in HCI have shown that technology can be used to change people’s BIP through visual, tactile, proprioceptive, and auditory stimulation. This paper investigates, for the first time, the effect of olfactory stimuli, by looking at a possible enhancement of a known auditory effect on BIP. We present two studies building on emerging knowledge in the field of crossmodal correspondences. First, we explored the correspondences between scents and body shapes. Then, we investigated the impact of combined scents and sounds on one’s own BIP. Our results show that scent stimuli can be used to make participants feel lighter or heavier (i.e., using lemon or vanilla) and to enhance the effect of sound on perceived body lightness. We discuss how these findings can inform future research and design directions to overcome body misperception and create novel augmented and embodied experiences.

Highlights

  • A negative body perception or misconception can cause an elevated risk of eating disorders, isolation, and mental disease [16, 29, 34]

  • Following the confirmatory results from Study 1, in Study 2 we examined the multisensory impact of combined scents and sound on Body Image Perception (BIP), following the findings from prior work on BIP adaptation [11, 2] and inspired by the idea that "what is essential in the sensuous-perceptible is not that which separates the senses from one another, but that which (...) unites them among themselves" (Von Hornbostel, The Unity of the Senses, 1927/1950, p. 214) [49][51]

  • We found a significant effect for scent (F(3,52)= 11.210 p

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Summary

Introduction

A negative body perception or misconception can cause an elevated risk of eating disorders, isolation, and mental disease [16, 29, 34]. Such distortions of one’s own body image affect one’s way of interacting with others and with the environment, negatively impacting one’s emotional state [29, 57]. Research in neuroscience [20, 56] has shown that our brain holds several mental models of one’s own body appearance, known as body perceptions, necessary for successful interactions with the environment. These studies have demonstrated that these body perceptions are continuously updated in response to sensory inputs received from outside and inside the body [21]. Our study suggests an opportunity to design sensory feedback oriented toward changing one’s BIP

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