SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin 10124, Italy; NPSY-Lab.VR, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Verona 37129, Italy.
SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin 10124, Italy; NIT (Neuroscience Institute of Turin), Turin 10124, Italy.
Cognition. 2021 Jul;212:104693. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104693. Epub 2021 Mar 24.
The feeling of owning one's body underlies human self-awareness. Body-ownership illusions allow temporarily modulating body ownership, which has observable effects on the behavior and cognitive processes. However, the extent of those effects is unclear. Here, we investigated whether illusory ownership of a virtual body extended to ownership of the value/meaning of its actions. A variation of detection-of-deception procedure (Concealed Information Test) was performed by an embodied virtual avatar (first-person perspective, 1PP), or a non-embodied one (third-person perspective, 3PP), while the skin conductance responses (SCRs) were recorded from passively observing participants. Target stimuli (i.e., concealed information) evoked significantly larger SCRs than the neutral ones only when the avatar was embodied (in 1PP). Such pattern of SCR differences corresponds to that observed when participants perform the task themselves, thus suggesting that the sole experience of owning a virtual body can trigger physiological responses related to the subjective significance of the body's actions.
主体感是人类自我意识的基础。躯体所有权错觉可以暂时改变对身体的所有权认知，这种改变对行为和认知过程有可观察到的影响。然而，这些影响的程度尚不清楚。在这里，我们研究了虚拟身体的错觉所有权是否会延伸到对其动作的价值/意义的所有权。通过具身化的虚拟化身（第一人称视角，1PP）或非具身化的虚拟化身（第三人称视角，3PP）进行欺骗检测程序（隐藏信息测试）的变体，同时从被动观察参与者那里记录皮肤电反应（SCR）。只有当化身是具身化的（在 1PP 中）时，目标刺激（即隐藏信息）才会引起比中性刺激显著更大的 SCR。这种 SCR 差异的模式与参与者自己执行任务时观察到的模式相对应，这表明仅仅体验拥有一个虚拟身体就可以引发与身体动作的主观意义相关的生理反应。
