The perceptual homunculus:the perception of the relative proportions of the human body

Linkenauger, Sally and Wong, Hong Yu and Geuss, Michael and Stefanucci, Jeanine and McCulloch, Kathleen Cameron and Bülthoff, Heinrich H. and Mohler, Betty J. and Proffitt, Dennis R. (2015) The perceptual homunculus:the perception of the relative proportions of the human body. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144 (1). pp. 103-113. ISSN 0096-3445

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Abstract

Given that observing one’s body is ubiquitous in experience, it is natural to assume that people accurately perceive the relative sizes of their body parts. This assumption is mistaken. In a series of studies, we show that there are dramatic systematic distortions in the perception of bodily proportions, as assessed by visual estimation tasks, where participants were asked to compare the lengths of two body parts. These distortions are not evident when participants estimate the extent of a body part relative to a noncorporeal object or when asked to estimate noncorporal objects that are the same length as their body parts. Our results reveal a radical asymmetry in the perception of corporeal and noncorporeal relative size estimates. Our findings also suggest that people visually perceive the relative size of their body parts as a function of each part’s relative tactile sensitivity and physical size

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2800/2806
Subjects:
?? PSYCHOLOGY(ALL)EXPERIMENTAL AND COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGYDEVELOPMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE ??
ID Code:
71000
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
29 Sep 2014 08:16
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Sep 2023 01:06