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Journal Article

The Perceptual Homunculus: The Perception of the Relative Proportions of the Human Body

MPS-Authors
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Bülthoff,  HH
Department Human Perception, Cognition and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;

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Mohler,  BJ
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;
Research Group Space and Body Perception, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Linkenauger, S., Wong, H., Geuss, M., Stefanucci, J., McCulloch, K., Bülthoff, H., et al. (2015). The Perceptual Homunculus: The Perception of the Relative Proportions of the Human Body. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(1), 103-113. doi:10.1037/xge0000028.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002A-4776-A
Abstract
Given that observing one’s body is ubiquitous in experience, it is natural to assume that people accurately
perceive the relative sizes of their body parts. This assumption is mistaken. In a series of studies, we show
that there are dramatic systematic distortions in the perception of bodily proportions, as assessed by visual estimation tasks, where participants were asked to compare the lengths of two body parts. These distortions are not evident when participants estimate the extent of a body part relative to a noncorporeal object or when asked to estimate noncorporal objects that are the same length as their body parts. Our results reveal a radical asymmetry in the perception of corporeal and noncorporeal relative size estimates. Our findings also suggest that people visually perceive the relative size of their body parts as a function
of each part’s relative tactile sensitivity and physical size.