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Updated: Dec 12, 2025
08:12
Experimental Methods to Study Human Postural Control
Published on: September 11, 2019
9.9K
The Developing Bodily Self: How Posture Constrains Body Representation in Childhood
Janna M Gottwald1,2, Laura-Ashleigh Bird1, Samantha Keenaghan1
1University of Durham.
Child Development
|August 9, 2020
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Body Representation
Background:
- Adult body representation relies on multisensory input and knowledge of body postures.
- Understanding how these constraints develop in children is crucial for developmental neuroscience.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether body posture congruency constrains body representation in children similarly to adults.
- To examine the influence of visual-tactile and postural congruency on body ownership and hand localization in children and adults.
Main Methods:
- Employed the rubber hand illusion paradigm with 180 participants, including adults and 6- to 7-year-old children.
- Measured proprioceptive drift (hand localization accuracy) and subjective ratings of hand ownership.
- Manipulated the congruency of the fake hand's posture and visual-tactile stimulation relative to the participant's own hand.
Main Results:
- Both visual-tactile and postural congruency significantly increased proprioceptive drift towards the fake hand across all age groups.
- Higher ratings of hand ownership were associated with visual-tactile congruency, but not with postural congruency.
- Children demonstrated similar constraints from postural information in their body representation as adults.
Conclusions:
- Posture significantly constrains body representation in both children and adults, indicating similar developmental mechanisms.
- Children possess robust and sensitive systems for maintaining their sense of bodily self, comparable to adults.
- Multisensory integration, including postural information, plays a key role in shaping body representation from an early age.
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