Conversations between self and self as Sigmund Freud—A virtual body ownership paradigm for self counselling

Sofia Adelaide Osimo,Rodrigo Pizarro,Bernhard Spanlang,Mel Slater

doi:10.1038/srep13899

Sofia Adelaide Osimo, Rodrigo Pizarro + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep13899

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Abstract

When people see a life-sized virtual body (VB) from first person perspective in virtual reality they are likely to have the perceptual illusion that it is their body. Additionally such virtual embodiment can lead to changes in perception, implicit attitudes and behaviour based on attributes of the VB. To date the changes that have been studied are as a result of being embodied in a body representative of particular social groups (e.g., children and other race). In our experiment participants alternately switched between a VB closely resembling themselves where they described a personal problem, and a VB representing Dr Sigmund Freud, from which they offered themselves counselling. Here we show that when the counsellor resembles Freud participants improve their mood, compared to the counsellor being a self-representation. The improvement was greater when the Freud VB moved synchronously with the participant, compared to asynchronously. Synchronous VB movement was associated with a much stronger illusion of ownership over the Freud body. This suggests that this form of embodied perspective taking can lead to sufficient detachment from habitual ways of thinking about personal problems, so as to improve the outcome, and demonstrates the power of virtual body ownership to effect cognitive changes.

Highlights

A body ownership illusion is a perceptual illusion that an external object or surrogate whole body has been incorporated into the body representation of the person concerned
A famous example is the rubber hand illusion (RHI)[5] where a rubber hand seen on a table in front of the subject is seen to be stroked synchronously with felt touches on the corresponding, out-of-sight, real hand
A similar technique, relying on visuotactile integration between tactile stimulation seen on the surrogate body and corresponding stimulation felt on the real body, has been used for whole body illusions, whether out-of-body[9,10], or with respect to ownership of a plastic manikin body seen from first person perspective (1PP) through video delivered via a head-mounted display (HMD)[11]

Summary

Introduction

A body ownership illusion is a perceptual illusion that an external object or surrogate whole body has been incorporated into the body representation of the person concerned. A similar technique, relying on visuotactile integration between tactile stimulation seen on the surrogate body and corresponding stimulation felt on the real body, has been used for whole body illusions, whether out-of-body[9,10], or with respect to ownership of a plastic manikin body seen from first person perspective (1PP) through video delivered via a head-mounted display (HMD)[11]. One body represented themselves and the other a counsellor with whom they would discuss a personal problem While embodying their own body (lookalike) representation they described the problem. They transferred to the counsellor body, and from that perspective saw and heard their lookalike body describing the problem, and gave some insight into how the problem might be solved They would transfer back to their own lookalike body and look at and listen to the counsellor body giving them the advice, and respond to it.

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