Perceived location of self.

Abstract

Evidence suggests that the perceived location of the self is changeable. I replicated Legennhager et al (2007) where participants experienced a perceptual illusion of a relocated self, created by having a participant wear virtual reality goggles that present another's perspective. The goals of this research were to give physiological response evidence to the sentiment that the self is able to be relocated. Many experiments rely only on self-report, despite the wealth of evidence showing that self-report and surveys are often misleading (Dollinger, et al. 2009). Selected from general psychology courses, participants were paired into groups of two. Participants wore virtual reality glasses that were connected by a video cable to a video camera. The camera was fixed on another participant's head, so that the participant was viewing his/her counterpart in three dimensions from above via Vuzix VR (virtual reality) glasses. The researcher appeared to be rubbing the participant on the arm. The BIOPAC system was utilized to measure the physiological response, including galvanic skin response, of the participants, during the experiment. The hypothesis was that the participants would have a physiological response to perceived touch.--Abstract.