UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC), University College London, University of London, London, UK.
Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Department of Psychology, Seville, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 18;7(1):5748. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-05870-4.
Mental body-representations are highly plastic and can be modified after brief exposure to unexpected sensory feedback. While the role of vision, touch and proprioception in shaping body-representations has been highlighted by many studies, the auditory influences on mental body-representations remain poorly understood. Changes in body-representations by the manipulation of natural sounds produced when one's body impacts on surfaces have recently been evidenced. But will these changes also occur with non-naturalistic sounds, which provide no information about the impact produced by or on the body? Drawing on the well-documented capacity of dynamic changes in pitch to elicit impressions of motion along the vertical plane and of changes in object size, we asked participants to pull on their right index fingertip with their left hand while they were presented with brief sounds of rising, falling or constant pitches, and in the absence of visual information of their hands. Results show an "auditory Pinocchio" effect, with participants feeling and estimating their finger to be longer after the rising pitch condition. These results provide the first evidence that sounds that are not indicative of veridical movement, such as non-naturalistic sounds, can induce a Pinocchio-like change in body-representation when arbitrarily paired with a bodily action.
心理身体表象具有高度的可塑性，可以在短暂暴露于意外感官反馈后进行修改。虽然许多研究已经强调了视觉、触觉和本体感觉在塑造身体表象方面的作用，但听觉对心理身体表象的影响仍知之甚少。最近的研究证据表明，通过对人体与表面碰撞时产生的自然声音进行操纵，可以改变身体表象。但是，这些变化是否也会发生在非自然声音上，因为这些声音无法提供有关身体产生或承受冲击的信息？基于音高动态变化引起垂直平面运动印象和物体大小变化的已有充分记录的能力，我们要求参与者在没有手部视觉信息的情况下，用左手拉动右手食指指尖，并同时呈现上升、下降或恒定音高的短暂声音。结果显示出“听觉匹诺曹”效应，参与者在听到上升音高的条件后，感觉和估计自己的手指变长了。这些结果首次证明，即使是非自然的声音，当与身体动作任意搭配时，也能像非真实运动的声音一样，引起身体表象的类似匹诺曹的变化。
