What is embodiment? A psychometric approach

What is it like to have a body? The present study takes a psychometric approach to this question. We collected structured introspective reports of the rubber hand illusion, to systematically investigate the structure of bodily self-consciousness. Participants observed a rubber hand that was stroked...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition 2008-06, Vol.107 (3), p.978-998
Main Authors: Longo, Matthew R., Schüür, Friederike, Kammers, Marjolein P.M., Tsakiris, Manos, Haggard, Patrick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Body representation
Embodiment
Factor Analysis
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human Body
Humans
Likert Scales
Metacognition
Ownership
Perception
Personality. Affectivity
Phenomenology
Proprioception
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Representations of the body
Self Concept
Self representation
Self-consciousness
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Summary:What is it like to have a body? The present study takes a psychometric approach to this question. We collected structured introspective reports of the rubber hand illusion, to systematically investigate the structure of bodily self-consciousness. Participants observed a rubber hand that was stroked either synchronously or asynchronously with their own hand and then made proprioceptive judgments of the location of their own hand and used Likert scales to rate their agreement or disagreement with 27 statements relating to their subjective experience of the illusion. Principal components analysis of this data revealed four major components of the experience across conditions, which we interpret as: embodiment of rubber hand, loss of own hand, movement, and affect. In the asynchronous condition, an additional fifth component, deafference, was found. Secondary analysis of the embodiment of runner hand component revealed three subcomponents in both conditions: ownership, location, and agency. The ownership and location components were independent significant predictors of proprioceptive biases induced by the illusion. These results suggest that psychometric tools may provide a rich method for studying the structure of conscious experience, and point the way towards an empirically rigorous phenomenology.
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.004