Alsmith, A. J. T. & Longo, M. R. (2014). Where exactly am I? Self-location judgements distribute between head and torso. Consciousness and Cognition 24, 70–74. DOI 10.1016/j.concog.2013.12.005.
Key takeaways
From the reading, NOTE-1008.
- Pointing at oneself, on one’s own body. Earlier studies asked people to locate a self on a drawn outline or a cartoon (Limanowski & Hecht 2011; Starmans & Bloom 2012), or narrowed it down by interview (Bertossa et al. 2008). Here people pointed at themselves, adapting the old “egocentre” task from the study of binocular vision.
- Two regions, not one point. Over 96 trials each, answers fell mostly on the upper face or the upper torso (region effect F(4, 36) = 9.70, p < .0001). “No single body part is judged as the unique seat of the self.”
- Where the pointer starts decides which. Starting from straight up pushed answers to the face, from straight down to the torso (F(4, 36) = 24.00). In the visual condition from above, about three answers in four were to the upper face (read off Fig. 2).
- Vision and touch agree. The haptic answers were less sharply bimodal, which the authors read as lower precision, not a different judgement.
- What it can carry is small. Ten participants; 20.7% of trials excluded for a camera delay; and with the lower torso dropped, the region effect is F(3, 27) = 2.90, printed “p = .53” and called significant, when that F gives p ≈ .053. The start effect, which did survive, is also what a “stop at the first plausible place” strategy predicts.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-20 at the owner’s request, in the round of experimental work near the rubber hand illusion. It is an experiment by a philosopher and a psychologist, tagged “experimental philosophy” by its authors, but it is not a folk-concept survey: participants judged where they themselves are, on their own bodies. Read in full: Active.
It bears on THEORY-768, Blanke & Metzinger’s minimal selfhood, at its self-location dimension, defined by them as “a determinate volume in space, normally localized within the bodily boundaries”. The result fits a volume better than a point, and it gives a measure of self-location other than the walking-back drift that THEORY-768’s promotion test says cannot measure it alone. It also shows that this measure moves with task context. It does not meet or bear against that THEORY’s promotion test, which asks for whole-body measures during the rubber hand illusion and for people without a history of agency. It bears on none of THEORY-766, THEORY-769, THEORY-767 or THEORY-458: it involves no ownership manipulation and no action. On the record’s self holdings it is about TERM-045’s sense 1, the subject, located in space. It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.
Filed alongside: Starmans & Bloom 2012, which it criticises and contrasts (LIT-1265).