Abstract
It is noted that the perceptual experience of body and space can be modulated by changing the action capabilities or by manipulating the perceived body dimensions through a multisensory stimulation. This study adds to pre-existing literature by investigating the alterations in bodily experience following embodiment to both enlarged and shrunked bodies, while participants actively navigated in a virtual environment. A normal-sized body served as a reference condition. After each embodied navigation, participants estimated the height and width of three different body parts. Results revealed that the embodiment over shrunked body induced a significant reduction in participants’ body image, while no changes were reported after the embodiment over the enlarged body. Findings were discussed in terms of previous literature exploring the constraints implicated in the ownership over different bodies.
Highlights
When we interact with the environment, our body perception can change
In line with our hypothesis, we found that after having experienced a shrunked body, participants reported a significant underestimation of their body size; in different words, participants represented their bodily dimensions as shorter after they had embodied a shrunked body
In the case of enlarged body, we found a significant change only about shoulders, but it was in the opposite direction of our a priori hypothesis
Summary
When we interact with the environment, our body perception can change. 4 “Rita Levi Montalcini” Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin, Via Cherasco, 15, 10126 Turin, Italy perception and emotional feeling about our body, while body schema refers to the unconscious multisensory representations necessary to guide actions in space (De Vignemont 2010; Pitron and De Vignemont 2017). We experience our body as relatively stable in our daily life, there is abundant literature suggesting that perception of bodily dimensions can be altered by changing our action capabilities in the environment (Miller et al 2018; Maravita and Iriki 2004; Longo and Serino 2012).
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