Abstract
Previous studies demonstrated the human ability to implicitly recognize their own body. When submitted to a visual matching task, participants showed the so-called self-advantage, that is, a better performance with self rather than others' body or body parts. Here, we investigated whether the body self-advantage relies upon a motor representation of one's body. Participants were submitted to a laterality judgment of self and others' hands (Experiment 1 and 3), which involves a sensory-motor mental simulation. Moreover, to investigate whether the self-advantage emerges also when an explicit self processing is required, the same participants were submitted to an explicit self-body recognition task (Experiment 2). Participants showed the self-advantage when performing the laterality judgment, but not when self-recognition was explicitly required. Thus, implicit and explicit recognition of the bodily self dissociate and only an implicit recognition of the bodily self, mapped in motor terms, allows the self-advantage to emerge.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e17927 |
Journal | PLoS One |
Volume | 6 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
- Medicine(all)