The development of own-body representation in childhood.

感知自己的身体对于能够感知世界并对其采取行动至关重要。但我们该怎么做呢？想象一下，我可以看到两只手放在我前面的桌子上。一张是我的，一张是我朋友的。我怎么才能分辨出哪个是哪个？这似乎是一个显而易见的问题，但考虑到这一点，事实并非如此。事实上，研究告诉我们，成年人使用几种不同类型的信息，包括多感官视觉、触觉和运动线索；并存储关于自己手的形状的知识。一个更困难的问题是，儿童如何在童年时期不断成长和变化的过程中辨认自己的身体。人们对此知之甚少。特别是，目前还不清楚儿童如何平衡对自己身体的一致看法的需要，以及随着身体的生长而灵活的需要。此外，新的虚拟现实技术正在涌现，可以在游戏或教育环境中为儿童提供虚拟身体。儿童如何接受和使用这些虚拟身体？这个为期3年的项目通过调查儿童和成年人如何感知自己的身体，以及这是如何建立起身体自我意识的基础来解决这些问题。我们将进行五个精心设计的实验，建立在我们以前在儿童身上成功使用的方法的基础上。项目团队拥有开展这项开创性工作所需的理论和技术背景；我们的实验室拥有合适的设备；该提案包括表明该方法可行性的先前发表的和试验数据。我们将使用“橡皮手错觉”对身体进行实验表征。参与者看到他们面前的桌子上有一只假手，而他们的真手被隐藏了起来。一名实验者同时抚摸双手。这让参与者感觉这只假手就像是他们自己的。此外，当被要求在自己的手下面指点时，他们指的是假手附近。我们最近的研究表明，4-13岁的儿童会出现这种错觉。在这里，我们将测量假手的大小或形状发生变化时会发生什么。如果参与者在这些情况下体验到的错觉较少，这表明他们对自己的手应该是什么样子有期望。在之前工作的基础上，实验1和实验2将检验这样的假设，即儿童和成人都会期望手必须是五指的，并且手的大小必须大致合适。至关重要的是，我们还将确定在这些身体表征中是否存在可塑性，使儿童能够接受例如比他们自己的手更大的手来解释成长。实验3-5将考察身体表征如何在给定运动物体的经验的情况下改变。儿童是否比成年人更快地从经验中学习，例如，接受一只超大的手只需要更少的运动经验？触觉信息如何与运动结合在一起，形成对身体自我的感觉？在这样的环境中，儿童接受自己的身体的限度是什么？该项目的学术成果将提供有关儿童如何代表他们的身体的重要新信息。这是一个介于心理学和计算机科学之间的跨学科项目，它的发现将在心理学、计算机科学、哲学和认知科学等一系列学科中具有重要的意义和兴趣。这项工作也将产生非学术影响。我们将向虚拟现实游戏的设计者以及开发仿生手臂或使用虚拟康复计划的医疗从业者传达研究结果。最后，我们将以这项工作为跳板，邀请志愿者儿童参加一系列考察感官和运动的工作坊。我们希望通过这些活动来鼓励他们从事STEM活动或职业生涯。

Perceiving one's own body is crucial for being able to perceive the world and act on it. But how do we do this? Imagine that I can see two hands resting on the table in front of me. One is mine, and one belongs to my friend. How do I tell which is which? This seems like an obvious question, but on consideration it is not. In fact, research has told us that adults use several different types of information, including multisensory visual, tactile, and movement cues; and stored knowledge about the form of their own hand. A more difficult question is how children manage to identify their own bodies in the midst of the constant growth and change which occurs in childhood. Very little is known about this. In particular, it is unclear how children balance the need for a consistent idea of their own body, and the need to be flexible as it grows. Further, new virtual reality technologies are emerging which can provide virtual bodies to children in games or educational settings. How might children accept and use these virtual bodies?This 3-year project addresses these issues by investigating how children and adults perceive their own bodies, and how this grounds the emerging sense of bodily self. We will run five carefully designed experiments, building on methods which we have previously used successfully with children. The project team have the theoretical and technical backgrounds necessary to carry out this pioneering work; our lab has suitable equipment; and the proposal includes previous published and pilot data showing the feasibility of the approach.We will experimentally examine own-body representation using the 'Rubber Hand Illusion'. The participant sees a fake hand on the table in front of them while their real hand is hidden. An experimenter strokes the hands at the same time. This makes the participant feel as if the fake hand is their own. Further, when asked to point underneath their own hand, they point near the fake hand. We have recently shown that 4 - 13-year-old children experience this illusion. Here, we will measure what happens when the size or shape of the fake hand is changed. If participants experience the illusion less in these cases, it shows that they have expectations for how their hand should look. Based on previous work, Experiments 1 and 2 will test the hypotheses that both children and adults will expect that a hand must be five-fingered; and that the hand must be approximately the right size. Crucially we will also determine whether there is plasticity in these body representations, enabling children to accept for example larger hands than their own to account for growth. Experiments 3-5 will examine how body representation may change given experience of a moving body. Do children learn more quickly from experience more than adults, for example requiring less movement experience to accept an oversized hand? How does touch information combined with movement in forming a sense of the bodily self? What are the limits of what children will accept as their own body in such an environment?The academic outputs of the project will provide vital new information on how children represent their bodies. This is an interdisciplinary project between Psychology and Computer Science, and its findings will be of major significance and interest across a range of disciplines - Psychology, Computer Science, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. The work will also have non-academic impact. We will communicate findings to designers of virtual reality games, as well as healthcare practitioners developing bionic arms or using virtual rehabilitation programmes. Finally we will use the work as a springboard to invite volunteer children to a series of workshops examining the senses and movement. Through these we hope to encourage them towards STEM activities or careers.