Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The roles of consistency and exclusivity in perceiving body ownership and agency

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Psychological Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Previous rubber/virtual hand illusion studies have established important constraints for the illusion that an artificial effector becomes part of one’s own body (perceived ownership), and that its actions are being caused by oneself (perceived agency). We can take these observed constraints to establish two of three Wegner’s (Trends Cogn Sci 7:65–69; Wegner, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:65–69, 2003) criteria for the perception of personal agency: priority and consistency, but not Wegner’s third criterion—exclusivity. In this study we tested with virtual hand illusion, whether exclusivity (participant is certain who was controlling the virtual effector) can also be established. We manipulated two factors: exclusivity and consistency. Our results show that on both ownership and agency judgments, consistency and exclusivity produced main effects, and the two effects interacted in an underadditive fashion. Taken together, these findings provide support for our suggestion to extend Wegner’s agency theory to explain perceived body ownership, which in turn provides an integrative framework for interpreting constraints on ownership and agency illusions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abdulkarim, Z., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2015). No causal link between changes in hand position sense and feeling of limb ownership in the rubber hand illusion. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 78, 1–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armel, K. C., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2003). Projecting sensations to external objects: Evidence from skin conductance response. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 270, 1499–1506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blakemore, S. J., Wolpert, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2002). Abnormalities in the awareness of action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 237–242.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Botvinick, M., & Cohen, J. (1998). Rubber hands’ feel’ touch that eyes see. Nature, 391, 756.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Caspar, E. A., De Beir, A., Magalhaes de Saldanha da Gama, P. A., Yernaux, F., Cleeremans, A., et al (2015). New frontiers in the rubber hand experiment: When a robotic hand becomes one’s own. Behavior Research Methods, 47, 744–755.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Costantini, M., & Haggard, P. (2007). The rubber hand illusion: Sensitivity and reference frame for body ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 229–240.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Frith, C. D., Blakemore, S. J., & Wolpert, D. M. (2000). Abnormalities in the awareness and control of action. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 355, 1771–1788.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2000a). Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 14–21.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2000b). Self-reference and schizophrenia: A cognitive model of immunity to error through misidentification. In D. Zahavi (Ed.), Exploring the self: Philosophical and psychopathological perspectives on self-experience (pp. 203–239). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, N. P., Snijders, H. J., & Spence, C. (2006). Reaching with alien limbs: Visual exposure to prosthetic hands in amirror biases proprioception without accompanying illusions of ownership. Perception and Psychophysics, 68, 685–701.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hommel, B. (2009). Conscious and unconscious control of spatial action. In W. P. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of consciousness (pp. 171–181). Oxford: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kalckert, A., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2012). Moving a rubber hand that feels like your own: A dissociation of ownership and agency. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 40.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kalckert, A., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2014a). The moving rubber hand illusion revisited: Comparing movement and visuotactile stimulation to induce illusory ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 26, 117–132.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kalckert, A., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2014b). The spatial distance rule in the moving and classical rubber hand illusions. Consciousness and Cognition, 30, 118–132.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kokkinara, E., & Slater, M. (2014). Measuring the effects through time of the influence of visuomotor and visuotactile synchronous stimulation on a virtual body ownership illusion. Perception, 43, 43–58.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Liepelt, R., Dolk, T., & Hommel, B. (2017). Self-perception beyond the body: the role of past agency. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 81, 549–559.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd, D. M. (2007). Spatial limits on referred touch to an alien limb may reflect boundaries of visuo-tactile peripersonal space surrounding the hand. Brain and Cognition, 64, 104–109.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ma, K., & Hommel, B. (2013). The virtual-hand illusion: Effects of impact and threat on perceived ownership and affective resonance. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 604.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Ma, K., & Hommel, B. (2015a). Body-ownership for actively operated non-corporeal objects. Consciousness and Cognition, 36, 75–86.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ma, K., & Hommel, B. (2015b). The role of agency for perceived ownership in the virtual hand illusion. Consciousness and Cognition, 36, 277–288.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maravita, A., Spence, C., & Driver, J. (2003). Multisensory integration and the body schema: Close to hand and within reach. Current Biology, 13, R531–R539.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michotte, A. (1946/1963). La Perception de la Causalite, 1946. Louvain: Institut Superieur de Philosophie. (English translation by T. Miles & E. Miles, The perception of causality, Basic Books, 1963).

  • Obhi, S. S., & Hall, P. (2011). Sense of agency and intentional binding in joint action. Experimental Brain Research, 211, 655–662.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Preston, C. (2013). The role of distance from the body and distance from the real hand in ownership and disownership during the rubber hand illusion. Acta Psychologica, 142, 177–183.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rohde, M., Di Luca, M., & Ernst, M. O. (2011). The rubber hand illusion: Feeling of ownership and proprioceptive drift do not go hand in hand. PLoS One, 6(6), e21659.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Sanchez-Vives, M. V., Spanlang, B., Frisoli, A., Bergamasco, M., & Slater, M. (2010). Virtual hand illusion induced by visuomotor correlations. PLoS One, 5, e10381.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Shin, Y. K., Proctor, R. W., & Capaldi, E. J. (2010). A review of contemporary ideomotor theory. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 943–974.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Short, F., & Ward, R. (2009). Virtual limbs and body space: Critical features for the distinction between body space and near-body space. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35, 1092–1103.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Slater, M., Perez-Marcos, D., Ehrsson, H. H., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2008). Towards a digital body: The virtual arm illusion. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2, 6.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Synofzik, M., Vosgerau, G., & Newen, A. (2008). Beyond the comparator model: A multifactorial two-step account of agency. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 219–239.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris, M., Carpenter, L., James, D., & Fotopoulou, A. (2010). Hands only illusion: Multisensory integration elicits sense of ownership for body parts but not for non-corporeal objects. Experimental Brain Research, 204, 343–352.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris, M., & Haggard, P. (2005). The rubber hand illusion revisited: Visuotactile integration and self-attribution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31, 80–91.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris, M., Prabhu, G., & Haggard, P. (2006). Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 423–432.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris, M., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Gallagher, S. (2007). On agency and body ownership: Phenomenological and neurocognitive reflections. Consciousness & Cognition, 16, 645–660.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wegner, D. M. (2003). The mind’s best trick: how we experience conscious will. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 65–69.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wegner, D. M., Sparrow, B., & Winerman, L. (2004). Vicarious agency: experiencing control over the movement of others. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 86, 838–848.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wegner, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: sources of the experience of will. American Psychologist, 54, 480–492.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, J., Ma, K., & Hommel, B. (2015). The virtual hand illusion is moderated by context-induced spatial reference frames. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1659.

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Personality and Cognition, Faculty of Psychological Science, Southwest University, Beibei, Chongqing, China

    Ke Ma & Hong Chen

  2. Institute for Psychological Research & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Ke Ma & Bernhard Hommel

Authors
  1. Ke Ma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Bernhard Hommel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Hong Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

KM and BH developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by KM. Data analyses were performed by KM and BH. KM drafted the manuscript, and BH and HC provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ke Ma or Hong Chen.

Ethics declarations

Funding

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31700942), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M622936), Chongqing Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Xm2017066), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Chinese Central Universities (SWU116055) to K. M. in China, and an infrastructure grant of the Netherlands Research organization (NWO) to B. H.

Conflict of interest

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Ethical standards

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of ethics committee in Southwest University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

Informed consent

Informed consents were obtained from all participants included in this study.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ma, K., Hommel, B. & Chen, H. The roles of consistency and exclusivity in perceiving body ownership and agency. Psychological Research 83, 175–184 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-0978-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-0978-7

Search

Navigation