Abstract
The way we experience the space around us is highly subjective. It has been shown that motion potentialities that are intrinsic to our body influence our space categorization. Furthermore, we have recently demonstrated that in the extrapersonal space, our categorization also depends on the movement potential of other agents. When we have to categorize the space as “Near” or “Far” between a reference and a target, the space categorized as “Near” is wider if the reference corresponds to a biological agent that has the potential to walk, instead of a biological and non-biological agent that cannot walk. But what exactly drives this “Near space extension”? In the present paper, we tested whether abstract beliefs about the biological nature of an agent determine how we categorize the space between the agent and an object. Participants were asked to first read a Pinocchio story and watch a correspondent video in which Pinocchio acts like a real human, in order to become more transported into the initial story. Then they had to categorize the location ("Near" or "Far") of a target object located at progressively increasing or decreasing distances from a non-biological agent (i.e., a wooden dummy) and from a biological agent (i.e., a human-like avatar). The results indicate that being transported into the Pinocchio story, induces an equal “Near” space threshold with both the avatar and the wooden dummy as reference frames.
Highlights
We perceive space as a function of our action potentialities [1,2,3]
The Transportation score positively predicted a reduction of “Near” space threshold when the biological agent was adopted with respect to the nonbiological agent as reference frame (RF)
To clarify the role played by the mechanism of identification with the characters, an additional correlation has been performed between the Transportation score without the last two items (i.e., “I’m identified in Pinocchio”; “I’m identified in Geppetto”) and the JTTNB-B index (r = .27, p = .029)
Summary
We perceive space as a function of our action potentialities [1,2,3]. According to the most recent version of the embodied perception theory visual information is scaled by the non-visual metrics derived from the body [4]. Some studies on distance perception in the extrapersonal space have shown that when the observer has to carry a heavy load, the egocentric distance to a given object is perceived to be larger [1]. When we adopt a non-biological body (i.e., a wooden dummy) as RF instead, the space categorized as “Near” is smaller [6]. Recognizing the biological nature of the agent seems to be essential in order to categorize a wider portion of space as “Near”. This interpretation is in accordance with research on action co-representation, which reveals that we represent biological agents in a different way than non-biological agents [7,8,9,10,11]
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