Honors Theses
Advisor
Benjamin Kunz
Department
Psychology
Publication Date
Spring 4-2014
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Abstract
The body schema describes an internal representation of the body in space, and is generated from a number of different sense modalities such as vision and proprioception. Botvinick and Cohen's rubber hand illusion (1998) demonstrates the relative contributions of vision, tactile perception and proprioception to body awareness. In this illusion, a participant's real hand is concealed from view and a prosthetic rubber hand is seen in its place. An experimenter simultaneously administers tactile stimulation to both the seen rubber hand and participant's actual hidden hand. The combination of this visual and tactile information overrides proprioceptive cues to body perception, creating a sense of ownership of the rubber hand. The present experiment extends research on the sensory inputs to the body schema by employing the rubber hand illusion to investigate the role of auditory information in construction of the body schema. Tactile stimulation was administered with sandpaper while a prerecorded scratching noise played from a concealed speaker. We found that the inclusion of a sound cue heightened the effects of the illusion and caused participants to more readily accept the rubber hand into the body schema. The findings of this study contribute to the existing understanding of body perception by demonstrating the influence of the auditory system in limb localization.
Permission Statement
This item is protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) and may only be used for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly purposes.
Keywords
Undergraduate research
Disciplines
Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
eCommons Citation
O'Mera, Bridget, "Auditory Information in the Form of a Scratching Sound Enhances the Effects of the Rubber Hand Illusion" (2014). Honors Theses. 63.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uhp_theses/63