Body ownership and beyond: Connections between cognitive neuroscience and linguistic typology

During the past few decades, two disciplines that rarely come together—namely, cognitive neuroscience and linguistic typology—have been generating remarkably similar results regarding the representational domain of personal possessions. Research in cognitive neuroscience indicates that although the core self is grounded in body ownership, the extended self encompasses a variety of noncorporeal possessions, especially those that play a key role in defining one’s identity. And research in linguistic typology indicates that many languages around the world contain a distinct grammatical construction for encoding what is commonly called “inalienable” possession—a category of owned objects that almost always includes body parts, but that also tends to include several other kinds of personally relevant entities. Both of these independent lines of investigation are summarized, and a number of interdisciplinary connections between them are discussed.     

The distorted hand metric representation serves both perception and action

ABSTRACT

The representation of our body location is achieved by integrating sensorimotor inputs with information about our body size. Previous studies have shown that the metric representation of our hand, also called the body model, is distorted, namely overestimated in width and underestimated in length, although we are able to perform accurate fine movements. Considering the known dissociation between action-oriented and perception-oriented body representations, we asked whether the body model mainly serves body perception or whether it is also involved in movements. Twenty-one healthy adults were administered with the Localization Task (LT) which required the participants to localise the perceived position of their unseen hand by means of a stick held by their other hand, and the Proprioceptive Matching Task (PMT) which required the participants to match their perceived hand position with a visual target. LT and PMT maps were compared with the actual hand sizes. We found that the PMT map exhibited similar body model distortions, confirming that the body model is involved in motor programming. Furthermore, we observed that a partial adjustment of the distortions occurs in a motor condition.     

Heuristics as beliefs and as behaviors: the adaptiveness of the "hot hand"

and analyzed reasoning by asking: what are the reasoner's goals? This emphasizes the adaptiveness of behavior rather than whether a belief is normative. Belief in the "hot hand" in basketball suggests that players experiencing streaks should be given more shots, but this has been seen as a fallacy due to failure to find dependencies between players' shots. Based on their findings, I demonstrate by Markov modeling and simulation that streaks are valid allocation cues for deciding who to give shots to, because this behavior achieves the team goal of scoring more. Empirically I show that this adaptive heuristic is supported by the fallacious belief in dependency, more so as skill level increases. I extend the theoretical analysis to identify general conditions under which following streaks should be beneficial. Overall, this approach illustrates the advantages of analyzing reasoning in terms of adaptiveness.     

EFFECTS OF INTERMITTENT PUNISHMENT ON SELF-INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR: AN EVALUATION OF SCHEDULE THINNING

Although the use of punishment often raises ethical issues, such procedures may be needed when the reinforcers that maintain behavior cannot be identified or controlled, or when competing reinforcers cannot be found. Results of several studies on the effects of intermittent schedules of punishment suggest that therapists must use fairly rich schedules of punishment to suppress problem behavior. However, residential caretakers, teachers, and parents often have difficulty implementing programs that require constant monitoring of the client's behavior. In this study, we examined the feasibility of gradually thinning the delivery of punishment from a continuous schedule to an intermittent schedule during the course of treatment for self-injurious behavior (SIB). Results of functional analyses for 5 individuals who had been diagnosed with profound mental retardation indicated that their SIB was not maintained by social consequences. Treatment with continuous schedules of time-out (for 1 participant) or contingent restraint (for the other 4 participants) produced substantial reductions in SIB. When they were exposed to intermittent schedules of punishment (fixed-interval [FI] 120 s or FI 300 s), SIB for all but 1 of the participants increased to levels similar to those observed during baseline. For these 4 participants, the schedule of punishment was gradually thinned from continuous to FI 120 s or FI 300 s. For 2 participants, SIB remained low across the schedule changes, demonstrating the utility of thinning from continuous to intermittent schedules of punishment. Results for the other 2 participants showed that intermittent punishment was ineffective, despite repeated attempts to thin the schedule.     

定量运动负荷和个性特征对动觉准确性和动作稳定性的影响

目的在于了解个性特征和定量运动负荷与同射箭运动员技术水平密切相关的肘关节动觉方位准确性和手动作稳定性的关系。研究结果表明：个性特征对肘关节动觉方位准确性和手动作稳定性的影响不显著;定量运动负荷可以使肘关节动觉方位准确性明显提高,而手动作稳定性变化不显著。本研究初步证明了韩国射箭训练中利用跑步等手段使运动员处于较高心率之下进行射准练习的方法是实用有效的。     

A person-oriented approach to hand hygiene behaviour: Emotional empathy fosters hand hygiene practice

Objectives: Adopting a social-psychological approach, this research examines whether emotional empathy, an affective reaction regarding another’s well-being, fosters hand hygiene as this affects other’s health-related well-being extensively.

Design: Three studies tested this notion: (a) a cross-sectional study involving a sample of health care workers at a German hospital, (b) an experiment testing the causal effect of empathy on hand hygiene behaviour and (c) an 11-week prospective study testing whether an empathy induction affected disinfectant usage frequency in two different wards of a hospital.

Main outcome measures: Self-reported hand hygiene behaviour based on day reconstruction method was measured in Study 1, actual hand sanitation behaviour was observed in Study 2 and disinfectant usage frequency in two different hospital wards was assessed in Study 3.

Results: Study 1 reveals an association of empathy with hand hygiene cross-sectionally, Study 2 documents the causal effect of empathy on increased hand sanitation. Study 3 shows an empathy induction increases hand sanitiser usage in the hospital.

Conclusions: Increasing emotional empathy promotes hand hygiene behaviour, also in hospitals. Besides providing new impulses for the design of effective interventions, these findings bear theoretical significance as they document the explanatory power of empathy regarding a distal explanandum (hand hygiene).     

Spatial limits on referred touch to an alien limb may reflect boundaries of visuo-tactile peripersonal space surrounding the hand

In this study, the spatial limits of referred touch to a rubber hand were investigated. Participants rated the strength of the perceived illusion when the rubber hand was placed in one of six different spatial positions (at a distance of 17.5-67.5cm horizontal from the participant's own hand). The results revealed a significant nonlinear relationship in the strength of the illusion, with the strongest ratings given when the two hands were closest; decaying significantly after a distance of 30cm. The time taken to elicit the illusion followed a similar trend. These results may reflect the response properties of bimodal visuo-tactile cells encoding peripersonal space around the hand.     

Seeing an image of the hand affects performance on a crossmodal congruency task for sequences of events

The crossmodal congruency effect (CCE) is augmented when viewing an image of a hand compared to an object. It is unclear if this contextual effect extends to a non-spatial CCE. Here, participants discriminated the number of tactile vibrations delivered to the hand whilst ignoring visual distractors on images of their own or another’s hand or an object. The CCE was not modulated by stimulus context. Viewing one’s hand from a third person perspective increased errors relative to viewing an object (Experiment 1). Errors were reduced when viewing hands, from first or third person perspectives, with additional identity markers (Experiments 2 and 3). Our results suggest no effect of context on the non-spatial CCE and that differences in task performance between hand and object images depend on their visual properties. These findings are discussed in light of the relationship between body representation and perception of body-centred stimuli in the temporal domain.     

身体拥有感错觉对疼痛的影响及其作用机制

身体拥有感错觉以多通道的感官整合为基础,包括视觉-触觉、视觉-本体感觉、触觉-本体感觉、视觉-内感受的整合等。来自实验室急性痛以及慢性痛的大量结果表明拥有感错觉可产生镇痛作用。身体部位尺寸大小、肢体透明度等相关影响因素也逐渐得到揭示。拥有感错觉影响疼痛的机制与身体表征的改变有关,该过程可能涉及“身体网络”与“疼痛网络”间的连接,其中后顶叶皮层可能有重要作用。未来研究应更为深入地探索拥有感错觉范式以考察不同因素对疼痛的影响;在现有多感官整合的范式中重视内感受的作用;考察拥有感错觉改变疼痛的认知神经机制;区分急、慢性痛条件下以及不同慢性痛类型中拥有感错觉对疼痛的不同影响。     

A strange hand: On self-recognition and recognition of another

This article provides a phenomenological analysis of the difference between self-recognition and recognition of another, while referring to some contemporary neuroscientific studies on the rubber hand illusion. It examines the difference between these two forms of recognition on the basis of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s work. It argues that both phenomenologies, despite their different views on inter-subjectivity, allow for the specificity of recognition of another. In explaining self-recognition, however, Husserl’s account seems less convincing. Research concerning the rubber hand illusion has confirmed that self-recognition involves more than an immediate experience of oneself. Merleau-Ponty’s later work, describing self-recognition as the result of assimilative identification, will be used to explain the possibility of illusion between one’s “hereness” and “thereness”. The possibility of this illusion is inherent to self-recognition, while it is lacking in recognition of another.