A VR based research on body swap illusions, cognitive flexibility and creative behaviours.
Summary:
Art engagement involves an exchange between internal and external domains, in which sensory input becomes integrated through self-related processing. The present study investigated whether an art-viewing task designed to elicit either self-referential or other-referential thought could influence the stability of the self, as represented by the susceptibility to a Body Swap Illusion (BSI), and whether creative traits moderated the effects of these tasks. Participants completed a self-referential art task, an artist-referential art task, and a control task, before and after undergoing a VR-based Body Swap Illusion. Illusion susceptibility was assessed using a novel proprioceptive drift measure, alongside self-reported measures. The paradigm successfully captured a core component of body illusions: proprioceptive drift. Although no overall differences in BSI susceptibility were observed between the self- and artist-referential tasks, exploratory moderation analyses indicated that task effects varied as a function of individual participant characteristics. In particular, divergent thinking appeared as a moderator of proprioceptive drift and subjective embodiment. Individuals with higher levels of divergent thinking showed a stronger decrease in proprioceptive drift following the self-referential task and an increase in drift following the artist-referential task. Variability in emotional responses to the artworks also emerged as a potential moderating factor. These findings suggest that the influence of self- and other-referential engagement with artworks on body illusion susceptibility may depend on individual differences in higher-order cognitive processes.
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