Department of Psychology, Lancaster University.
Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2015 Feb;144(1):103-13. doi: 10.1037/xge0000028. Epub 2014 Dec 15.
Given that observing one's body is ubiquitous in experience, it is natural to assume that people accurately perceive the relative sizes of their body parts. This assumption is mistaken. In a series of studies, we show that there are dramatic systematic distortions in the perception of bodily proportions, as assessed by visual estimation tasks, where participants were asked to compare the lengths of two body parts. These distortions are not evident when participants estimate the extent of a body part relative to a noncorporeal object or when asked to estimate noncorporal objects that are the same length as their body parts. Our results reveal a radical asymmetry in the perception of corporeal and noncorporeal relative size estimates. Our findings also suggest that people visually perceive the relative size of their body parts as a function of each part's relative tactile sensitivity and physical size.
鉴于观察自身是一种普遍存在的体验，人们自然会认为自己能够准确地感知到身体各部分的相对大小。然而，这种假设是错误的。在一系列研究中，我们表明，在通过视觉估计任务来评估身体比例的感知时，会出现明显的系统性扭曲，即参与者被要求比较两个身体部位的长度。而当参与者相对于非身体物体来估计身体部位的长度，或者当被要求估计与身体部位长度相同的非身体物体时，这些扭曲就不明显了。我们的研究结果揭示了对身体和非身体相对大小估计的感知存在根本性的不对称。我们的发现还表明，人们通过视觉感知身体各部分的相对大小，是作为各部分相对触觉敏感度和物理大小的函数。
