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The Perceptual Homunculus: The Perception of the Relative Proportions of the Human Body
- Source :
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Publication Year :
- 2015
-
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.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
Visual perception
genetic structures
media_common.quotation_subject
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Homunculus
Young Adult
Developmental Neuroscience
Perception
Body Image
Body Size
Humans
Perceptual Distortion
General Psychology
Size Perception
media_common
Proprioception
Human body
Object (philosophy)
Touch
Visual Perception
Female
Psychology
Social psychology
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....9520dae3897bfea832927d3c47d803c0