Persistence of metric biases in body representation during the body ownership illusion

Abstract

Our perception of the body's metric is influenced by bias according to the axis, called the systematic metric bias in body representation. Systematic metric bias was first reported as Weber's illusion and observed in several parts of the body in various patterns. However, the systematic metric bias was not observed with a fake hand under the influence of the body ownership illusion during the line length judgment task. The lack of metric bias observed during the line length judgment task with a fake hand implies that the tactile modality occupies a relatively less dominant position than perception occurring through the real body. The change in weight between visual and tactile modalities during the body ownership illusion has not been adequately investigated yet, despite being a factor that influences the perception through body ownership illusion. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether the dominance of vision over tactile modality is prominent, regardless of the task type. To investigate whether visual dominance persists during the process of inducing body ownership illusion regardless of task type, we introduced spatial visuotactile incongruence (2 cm, 3 cm) in the longitudinal and transverse axes during the visuotactile localization tasks and measured the intensity of the body ownership illusion using a questionnaire. The results indicated that participants perceived smaller visuotactile incongruence when the discrepancy occurred in the transverse axis rather than in the longitudinal axis. The anisotropy in the tolerance of visuotactile incongruence implies the persistence of metric biases in body representation. The results suggest the need for further research regarding the factors influencing the weight of visual and tactile modalities. © 2022 Seo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.