Test persons can integrate their own smartphones into their bodily selves. What presumably plays a major role is the fact that the test persons had already had extensive experience in their lives in using a smartphone.
- Symbolic photo: colourbox.de/Kittipan Boonsopit
It seems to be the stuff of pure fantasy: a hand made of rubber feels as if it belongs to the owner's body. Although it is hardly conceivable, it is an illusion which is in fact well-known in the field of psychology - and one that can be produced in skilful experimental setups. Psychologists from Germany and the Netherlands have now shown for the first time how test persons can also integrate their own smartphones into their bodily selves. This means that whether an object is felt to belong to the owner's own body does not only depend on whether it has a form similar to that of a human hand. The extent to which the object is used also appears to play an important role. "The research question behind this is how flexible the brain is, and whether the daily use of modern technical devices can, in the long term, lead to their integration into the owner's own body scheme," as PD Dr. Roman Liepelt from the Institute of Psychology at Münster University explains. The researchers from Münster, Leiden (Netherlands) and Regensburg adapted the experimental setup used for the "rubber-hand illusion", with the test person laying their left hand on a table.
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