Agency deficit-related ownership and disownership enlargement in Rubber Hand Illusion

Abstract

The primary components of body representation-related ownership experiences include a mental construction of one's body image and the body schema that depend on the integration success of multimodal stimuli from the individual's social and physical environments. This study aimed to reveal the role of a sense of agency in the individual sensitivity to the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI). The agency was measured by a post-hock interview where the participants could verbally express their rubber hand ownership and disownership experiences while the RHI was induced. This study involved fifty healthy, right-handed college volunteers, consisting of 29 males (mean age 28.6) and 21 females (mean age 26.6). Handedness was assessed using the Edinburgh Inventory (Oldfield, 1970), with a 70% or higher cut-off score. Three main scores were defined to measure individual sensitivity for RHI: ownership, disownership, and proprioceptive drift. After completing the RHI the post-hock recorded verbal reports were analyzed by an automatized content analysis toolkit (NarrCat). Results showed that higher agency deficiency predicts higher sensitivity for RHI. However, higher cognitive control, and the conscious psychological reference-taking and elaboration of the experimental setting have not played an essential role in the emergence of the RHI sensitivity