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Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion

Some recent papers by P. Lush and colleagues have argued that the rubber hand illusion (RHI), where participants can feel a rubber hand as their own under appropriate multisensory stimulation, may be caused mainly by hypnotic suggestibility and expectations (demand characteristics). These papers rel...

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Autores principales: Slater, Mel, Ehrsson, H. Henrik
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9244625/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35782045
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.834492
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author Slater, Mel
Ehrsson, H. Henrik
author_facet Slater, Mel
Ehrsson, H. Henrik
author_sort Slater, Mel
collection PubMed
description Some recent papers by P. Lush and colleagues have argued that the rubber hand illusion (RHI), where participants can feel a rubber hand as their own under appropriate multisensory stimulation, may be caused mainly by hypnotic suggestibility and expectations (demand characteristics). These papers rely primarily on a study with 353 participants who took part in a RHI experiment carried out in a classical way with brush stroking. Participants experienced a synchronous condition where the rubber hand was seen to be touched in synchrony with touch felt on their corresponding hidden real hand, or the touches were applied asynchronously as a control. Each participant had a related measure of their hypnotisability on a scale known as the Sussex-Waterloo Scale of Hypnotisability (SWASH). The authors found a correlation between the questionnaire ratings of the RHI in the synchronous condition and the SWASH score. From this, they concluded that the RHI is largely driven by suggestibility and further proposed that suggestibility and expectations may even entirely explain the RHI. Here we examine their claims in a series of extensive new analyses of their data. We find that at every level of SWASH, the synchronous stimulation results in greater levels of the illusion than the asynchronous condition; moreover, proprioceptive drift is greater in the synchronous case at every level of SWASH. Thus, while the level of hypnotisability does modestly influence the subjective reports (higher SWASH is associated with somewhat higher illusion ratings), the major difference between the synchronous and asynchronous stimulation is always present. Furthermore, by including in the model the participants’ expectancy ratings of how strongly they initially believed they would experience the RHI in the two conditions, we show that expectations had a very small effect on the illusion ratings; model comparisons further demonstrate that the multisensory condition is two-to-three-times as dominant as the other factors, with hypnotisability contributing modestly and expectations negligibly. Thus, although the results indicate that trait suggestibility may modulate the RHI, presumably through intersubject variations in top-down factors, the findings also suggest that the primary explanation for the RHI is as a multisensory bodily illusion.
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spelling pubmed-92446252022-07-01 Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion Slater, Mel Ehrsson, H. Henrik Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Some recent papers by P. Lush and colleagues have argued that the rubber hand illusion (RHI), where participants can feel a rubber hand as their own under appropriate multisensory stimulation, may be caused mainly by hypnotic suggestibility and expectations (demand characteristics). These papers rely primarily on a study with 353 participants who took part in a RHI experiment carried out in a classical way with brush stroking. Participants experienced a synchronous condition where the rubber hand was seen to be touched in synchrony with touch felt on their corresponding hidden real hand, or the touches were applied asynchronously as a control. Each participant had a related measure of their hypnotisability on a scale known as the Sussex-Waterloo Scale of Hypnotisability (SWASH). The authors found a correlation between the questionnaire ratings of the RHI in the synchronous condition and the SWASH score. From this, they concluded that the RHI is largely driven by suggestibility and further proposed that suggestibility and expectations may even entirely explain the RHI. Here we examine their claims in a series of extensive new analyses of their data. We find that at every level of SWASH, the synchronous stimulation results in greater levels of the illusion than the asynchronous condition; moreover, proprioceptive drift is greater in the synchronous case at every level of SWASH. Thus, while the level of hypnotisability does modestly influence the subjective reports (higher SWASH is associated with somewhat higher illusion ratings), the major difference between the synchronous and asynchronous stimulation is always present. Furthermore, by including in the model the participants’ expectancy ratings of how strongly they initially believed they would experience the RHI in the two conditions, we show that expectations had a very small effect on the illusion ratings; model comparisons further demonstrate that the multisensory condition is two-to-three-times as dominant as the other factors, with hypnotisability contributing modestly and expectations negligibly. Thus, although the results indicate that trait suggestibility may modulate the RHI, presumably through intersubject variations in top-down factors, the findings also suggest that the primary explanation for the RHI is as a multisensory bodily illusion. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-06-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9244625/ /pubmed/35782045 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.834492 Text en Copyright © 2022 Slater and Ehrsson. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Slater, Mel
Ehrsson, H. Henrik
Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion
title Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion
title_full Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion
title_fullStr Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion
title_full_unstemmed Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion
title_short Multisensory Integration Dominates Hypnotisability and Expectations in the Rubber Hand Illusion
title_sort multisensory integration dominates hypnotisability and expectations in the rubber hand illusion
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9244625/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35782045
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.834492
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