What turns an information processing living thing into something which experiences? What is
thisentity having these experiences? Why there is always someone having the experiences?
It turns out that the experience of being a self—of being “someone” rather than “something” is not just an abstract idea. It is inextricably rooted in having and inhabiting a physical body.This is known as Bodily Self-Consciousness (BSC).
Sense of Ownership (SoO) is the pre-reflective experience that our body and its
parts “belong to me”. It is the physical feeling of “mineness”.
Sense of Agency (SoA) is the experience of being the owner and initiator of
our own actions. While ownership is about having a body, agency requires action
and is inherently temporal.
Peripersonal Space (PPS)is our invisible bubble around our body. It is the
multisensory, action-centered space immediately surrounding our body,
extending roughly to an arm’s length.
How We Test the Self in the Lab
To study something as subjective as the “self,” researchers have developed clever experimental paradigms to manipulate these constructs.
The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is the dominant paradigm for investigating the
Sense of Body Ownership. By synchronously stroking a participant’s hidden real
hand and a visible rubber hand, researchers can induce an illusory sense of
ownership over the fake hand.
Intentional Binding tests the implicit Sense of Agency. It measures the
subjective temporal compression between a voluntary action (like pressing a key)
and its sensory consequence (like hearing a tone).
Audio-Tactile Facilitation is used to map Peripersonal Space. Participants are
tested on how rapidly they can detect a weak tactile stimulus on their hand
while an auditory or visual stimulus is simultaneously presented near (looming in)
or far (looming out) from the body.