Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 141, Issue 2, October 2012, Pages 164-168
Acta Psychologica

Implicit body representations and the conscious body image

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.07.015Get rights and content
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Abstract

Recent studies have revealed that somatosensory processing relies on a class of implicit body representations showing large distortions of size and shape. The relation between these representations and the conscious body image remains unclear. Dissociations have been reported in the clinical literature on eating disorders between different body image measures, with larger and more consistent distortions found with depictive measures, in which participants compare their body to a visual depiction of a body, than metric measures, in which participants compare their body to some non-body standard. Here, we compared implicit body representations underlying position sense to the body image measured with both depictive and metric methods. The body image was measured using both a depictive method (template matching) in which participants judged whether their hand was wider or more slender than a shown hand picture, and a metric method (line length) in which participants judged whether different parts of their hand were shorter or longer than a presented line. Consistent with previous findings, characteristic distortions were found for the implicit body representation underlying position sense. These distortions were also found in attenuated form for metric – but not depictive – body image measures. While replicating the basic dissociation between implicit body representations and the conscious body image, these results demonstrate that this dissociation is not absolute and specific tasks may utilise both to varying degrees depending on task demands. Metric measures may not be pure measures of body image, but some combination of visual and somatosensory body representations.

Highlights

► Somatosensation relies on highly distorted representations of the body. ► When compared with a visual template, the conscious body image is largely veridical. ► When compared with a metric standard, the body image retains distortions. ► Different body image measures access different body representations. ► Suggests continuum of body representations

PsycINFO classification

2300 Human Experimental Psychology
2320 Sensory Perception
2380 Consciousness States

Keywords

Body image
Body representation
Hand
Somatosensation

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