visual representation of body measurements

3D Body Visualizer

We know that no amount of reassurance can ever be enough for your body, weight, or height. This is why we brought you a solution enabling you to see yourself and judge your looks without overthinking or self-doubting. Whether you are a man or a woman, our tool can help you set personal goals, compare progress, and help you understand your fitness journey.

Through the power of visualization, our interactive 3D human modeling simulator allows you to create personalized virtual representations of yourself. You can fine-tune your height, weight, gender, and shape; your on-screen figure will update to represent the details you’ve entered.

Our website is the perfect tool for those looking to gain or lose weight. You can see how you appear in real life or experiment with different visual features, such as muscle definition or fat. Don’t want to become too muscular? See what you would look like after gaining more muscles. Don’t want to become too fat? Well, you can check that out too! Everything is baked right into our user-friendly interface.

How To Use 3D Visualizer

In our tool’s user-friendly interface, you will see different factors and measurements that you can modify about your 3D character. Above the character, you’ll see two options. The first one lets you modify the gender between Male, Female, and Trained Male. The second option lets you change the measuring units between CM/KG and In/LBS.

You can find the most important buttons at the bottom of the screen, where you will see sliders to input your weight and height. The sliders are handy because they allow you to gradually update both factors and see how your appearance is affected by the slow change. It is important to note that we have designed these factors to change with each other by default, as they do in real life. However, you can change this by fixing one of the factors in place.

Pressing the “Fixed” button on the right on either height or weight allows you to freeze it while you freely change the other. Now, changing one factor won’t affect the other.

How Accurate Is the Body Visualizer?

We aim to create the most accurate visualizer on the internet, enabling our users to see only the most accurate image of themselves. We have designed our 3D Visualization tool to give approximate visualization based on average body parameters.

How We Plan To Improve

We are always trying and planning to improve our Visualizer by adding more features. So far, we have successfully added some of our planned features, while others are still in the works, including leg length, hip length, chest length, waist length, breast size, and muscularity. The addition of more factors allows you to get a better representation of your body.

So, try out our 3D Body Visualizer and let us know if you found it useful!

3.2/5 - (329 votes)

19 thoughts on “3D Body Visualizer”

I love this new site. I like the way you show animated images instead of just static images. I assume this is a work in progress, so I have a few suggestions. I’d like to see in addition to the basic height and weight entries options for basic measurements such as chest (bust), waist and hips. Also, I’d like to see an option for including in the same image multiple subjects (for example, male and female together or up to five subjects in the same image.

I agree it sounds ike good suggestions

Nice good for visualising how I will look after weight loss

Can you add any more features? Like chest size, waist size, bicep size, etc.?

I agree with the previous comments; there needs to be measurements for various parts of the body. On top of that, I’d like to see more definition in the human anatomy. For example, if you were to scale down the weight to lower levels, you would see the ribs and hip bones become more visible. Or perhaps you could add a scale to increase muscle tone, as two people with a similar body mass would look fairly different from each other if one worked out regularly and one didn’t. Overall, I enjoy what you’re build here, but I feel like you could add a bit more realism and variation to the final product

the weight it not accurate at all. it looks 25 pounds heavier than it should be.

It would be good to put in some variables for skeletal structure, particularly thngs like leg length – the model looks nothing like me, if my legs were proportioned similarly I’d be 25-30 cm taller! As for shoulders/ribcage – some of us are almost as wide as we’re tall!

Its fun but add customization

i want to be fat

I know its bot going to be accurate, but i dont use this for my own body. I make characters and i wanna know how they’d look, and it’s been good for me so far.

Great idea but what is wrong with your models anatomy, at least stop it looking like it is drunk and please try for a regular upright pose rather than hips thrust forward and shoulders so far back it looks painful.

Amen, Joe! And thank you for the chuckle.

would like to see some customization waist size, age etc.

Sorry, but in the current version the visualizer is useless. You should add at least the circumference of chest, legs, waist, arms.

I think it would be nice if they added a “trained female” model, as someone who lifts, I think it would be nice to add that.

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VisualBMI shows you what weight looks like on a human body. Using a large index of photos of men and women, you can get sense of what people look like at different weights or even the same weight. If you find this website useful, please share it or send a note.

Huge thanks to all those who share their stories and photos on reddit. This website would not be possible without them. These images are neither hosted by or affiliated with VisualBMI. These images were indexed from reddit posts that link to imgur. The subjects of these photos are not involved with VisualBMI in any way.

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BodyVisualizer

BodyVisualizer is a pseudo AI tool that simply allows to generate all possible body shapes and body types taking in input the gender and other body size input measurements such as height, Weight, chest, waist, hips, inseam and the fitness level in terms of number of exercise hours per week.

BodyVisualizer.com by Max Planck, is in other words a body builder, it transforms the way you see and understand your body through a virtual lens and units.

What BodyVisualizer.com Does

BodyVisualizer.com is an online platform designed to provide a detailed visual representation of the human body type based on various input measurements. Using WebGL technology for a seamless experience (with a strong recommendation for Google Chrome to avoid technical glitches), this tool caters to both male and female body types. However, it’s worth noting that bodies with a BMI under 17.5 are not visualized to promote health and well-being. The Software may not be used for pornographic purposes or to generate pornographic material whether commercial or not. Its license prohibits the use of the Software to train methods/algorithms/neural networks/etc. for commercial, pornographic, military, surveillance, or defamatory use of any kind.

How to Use it to calculate your body shape?

The process is straightforward: you enter specific body measurements, and the tool generates a 3D model that mirrors your body’s shape and size. This visual representation can be adjusted and viewed from different angles, offering a unique perspective on how changes in dimensions might alter your appearance.

This Body type calculator works for both female

and for male using the switcher button:

• Personalized Visualization: Tailors the 3D model to your specific body measurements, offering a personalized visualization experience.
• Multiple unit types : you can switch from centimeters to inches, from kilograms to pounds.
• Health and Fitness Motivation: Can serve as motivation for health and fitness goals by providing a visual benchmark or goal.
• Mobile Friendly: Accessible on various devices, including a mobile-friendly option for on-the-go use.
• Limited BMI Representation: Does not visualize bodies with a BMI under 17.5, which could be a limitation for some users.
• Browser Compatibility: Best used with Google Chrome, as certain browsers may encounter WebGL errors.

A Note on BodyVisualizer.com

While it might appear to be a modern AI tool, BodyVisualizer.com was actually developed in 2011 by the Perceiving Systems Department, a leading Computer Vision group. Despite its age, it remains a valuable resource for personal and educational use, blending technology with body perception in unique ways​ ​​ ​​ ​.

BodyVisualizer.com is available for free, making it an accessible tool for anyone interested in body visualization without any financial commitment.

• Fitness Tracking: Visualize body changes over time to track fitness progress.
• Fashion and Apparel: Help in understanding how different clothing sizes might fit or look.
• Educational Purposes: Serve as an educational tool to understand human anatomy in a more interactive way.

Q: Is BodyVisualizer.com suitable for all web browsers?

It’s best experienced on Google Chrome due to its reliance on WebGL technology. Some browsers, like Firefox on Linux, may not support it properly.

Q: Can BodyVisualizer.com visualize all body types?

It visualizes a wide range of body types but has a limitation for bodies with a BMI under 17.5.

Q: Is there any cost associated with using BodyVisualizer.com?

No, it’s a free tool accessible to anyone with internet access.

use coupon discount code “ raiday “

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3D MEASURE UP - A PERFECT FIT

ProtoTech’s 3D Measure Up is a technology platform that helps you create best fitting products for your customers. It accurately identifies landmarks on human bodies and provides various measurements like girths, distances, heights, and more. The technology uses a combination of Geometry, Computational, and Machine Learning (ML) for fast and accurate results. 

3D Measure Up is available as a WebApp, OEM App, or API for easy integration into your systems. With fat computation and high accuracy, it's perfect for businesses in fashion, apparel, fitness, and more. While it's designed for 3D scans of the human body, it can be used for any object. 

Choose 3D Measure Up for tailored solutions to your measurement needs!

REFERENCE VIDEOS

KEY FEATURES

Automatically detect and measure 250+ body landmarks

Measure distances, girths, heights, volumes etc. Make specific measurements that you need

Accurate and fast. We provide exact geometrical measurements

Takes 3D scan as input(OBJ/STL/PLY/GLTF/GLB)

Export your measurements to CSV, PDF, HTML format

Web App with state of the art 3D Visualization and UI/UX

Uses unique combiation of machine learning (ML) and geometric computations for landmark detection

Privacy and Confidentiality: Your data (3D scans) is always yours and used only for computing measurements

Works on any device – laptops, tablets, smartphones

Can be deployed on your own Cloud infrastructure

OEM version available for custom branding

PaaS – Integrate with your own app or service. Highly extensible and portable cloud API available

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

Automatically detects hundreds of landmarks

• Detects landmarks from the 3D scan of the human body supporting global standards like ISO 8559, BUFAR etc.
• Accurately measure heights, distances (straight, surface, convex etc.), girths, areas, volumes etc.
• Supports various measurement tools like tape measure, fall off, vernier caliper etc.

Girth measurements

• Measures various landmarks with a very high degree of precision
• Intelligent handling of units of measurements
• Girth plane can be aligned (translate / rotate) and resized (scale)

Distance measurements

• Calculates the straight point to point distance
• Calculates on-surface distance between two or more points
• Free-fall Length Measurements

Auto alignment

• Automatically aligns the 3D scan

Measurements at user specified location

• Request measurements at a specific location of your interest
• Flexibility in incorporating the measurements in your application the way it suits you

Volume and Area measurements

• Volume and Area measurements of the body

Uses Machine Learning (ML)

• Detects the landmarks very accurately and very quickly using a unique combination of ML and Computational model

Supported Export Formats

• Exports measurements to CSV, PDF and HTML formats

TESTIMONIALS

- Sabry Macher, 3D-Body Tech Visionary/Co-Founder at 3Dfy.me Limited, New Zealand.

- Eli Hillstrom , C.Ped, Forward Motion

- Chakir BADER , Founder, Versus Center

- Chakravarthy Palanisamy , Associate Professor, NIFT Kannur.

Iuri Feliciano , Instituto de Especialidades Ortopédicas, S.L. (Spain)

Predrag Cuklin , Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb.

Ashok Mehra,  Delhi

Babak Beygi (Hong Kong)

3D MEASURE UP - USE CASES

Custom fitted compression socks for diabetic patients, monitoring the effectiveness of wellness programs at gym or a fitness center, reduce garment and apparel returns of your ecommerce market place, body measurement for fashion and mtm garments, simple integration, continually learning, fully managed, accurate & real-time metrics, flexibility, version history, your ultimate guide to metrics list, apparel manufacturers, retailers, take our free trial.

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ProtoTech’s 3D Measure Up is based on a proprietary algorithm which is a combination of 3D geometry, computational and machine learning algorithms to provide you with a highly accurate and reliable identification and measurement.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The representation of body size: variations with viewpoint and sex.

• Department of Psychology, Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Perceived body size is a fundamental construct that reflects our knowledge of self and is important for all aspects of perception, yet how we perceive our bodies and how the body is represented in the brain is not yet fully understood. In order to understand how the brain perceives and represents the body, we need an objective method that is not vulnerable to affective or cognitive influences. Here, we achieve this by assessing the accuracy of full-body size perception using a novel psychophysical method that taps into the implicit body representation for determining perceived size. Participants were tested with life-size images of their body as seen from different viewpoints with the expectation that greater distortions would occur for unfamiliar views. The Body Shape Questionnaire was also administered. Using a two-alternative forced choice design, participants were sequentially shown two life-size images of their whole body dressed in a standardized tight-fitting outfit seen from the front, side, or back. In one image, the aspect ratio (with the horizontal or vertical dimension fixed) was varied using an adaptive staircase, while the other was undistorted. Participants reported which image most closely matched their own body size. The staircase honed in on the distorted image that was equally likely as the undistorted photo to be judged as matching their perception of themselves. From this, the perceived size of their internal body representation could be calculated. Underestimation of body width was found when the body was viewed from the front or back in both sexes. However, females, but not males, overestimated their width when the body was viewed from the side. Height was perceived accurately in all views. These findings reveal distortions in perceived size for healthy populations and show that both viewpoint and sex matter for the implicit body representation. Though the back view of one’s body is rarely–if ever–seen, perceptual distortions were the same as for the front view. This provides insight into how the brain might construct its representation of three-dimensional body shape.

Introduction

The body is such an important part of our life – without it, we would not even exist. We use our body to present ourselves and to perceive and interact in the world. Knowledge about body posture, position, size, and structure are required to interpret and react to sensory information that is constantly being received and that may be coded relative to the body ( Kopinska and Harris, 2003 ; Harris et al., 2015 ). Processing sensations and generating actions requires the brain to accurately map and represent the body and the body-in-space. However, the first-person perspective of the body is highly restricted, and the third-person perspective afforded by a mirror provides only a limited view. We cannot directly see our entire body in the same way that we can view the entirety of our hands, arms, and legs. However, it is the full three-dimensional body that is represented in the brain ( Kammers et al., 2009 ; Longo and Haggard, 2012 ). How is the brain able to form such a representation of the body when it is not able to see it from multiple viewpoints? How accurate is its representation? The question then becomes focused on body perception when seen in unfamiliar views, such as from the side or back, to better understand how the implicit body representation is built up in the brain. We aim to answer these questions by assessing how accurate people are at judging their full body size when viewing their body from various viewpoints of which only the frontal view would be familiar. We used our novel psychophysical method that provides an implicit measure of the internal body representation ( D’Amour and Harris, 2017 ). Our method involves a participant choosing which of two images is most like their own body and adjusting one of the images accordingly. It ends when both images (reference and distorted) are equally likely to be chosen, neither of which actually matches their body representation. The representation is calculated as being between these values.

Body size perception has typically been looked at in those suffering from eating disorders as distortions and disturbances of perceived body size and shape most obviously occur in these populations ( Molinari, 1995 ; Probst et al., 1995 ; Gardner and Brown, 2014 ). Such studies have often tended to focus on measuring body image – how one feels about one’s body from a cognitive, emotional, and subjective view – rather than looking at how the brain internally maps and represents the body.

The objective of the current study was to examine perceived full body size accuracy to determine baseline values of how distorted the brain’s representation might be in a healthy, young populations of both males and females. The perceived width and height of the full body was measured as seen from three different body viewpoints in order to assess how the accuracy of perception changes when the image is presented in familiar and unfamiliar views. Previous studies have suggested both men and women tend to overestimate body width (e.g., Dolan et al., 1987 ; Stephen et al., 2018 ) and have emphasized the importance of baseline judgments in the healthy population ( Sadibolova et al., 2019 ). However, until the introduction of virtual avatars, most studies have used smaller-than-life-size photographs, which confound absolute judgments with aspect ratio judgments and perhaps explain why perceived height, which requires the use of full-size images, has been neglected. Estimates of people’s perception of their height have tended to come from actions, such as ducking under barrier ( Stefanucci and Geuss, 2012 ) which may not correspond to perceptual measures. In photographs height tends to be underestimated ( Kato and Higashiyama, 1998 ). We hypothesized that there would be significant deviations from accurate in our healthy population, with the body being perceived as bigger and also as shorter than its actual size, with greater distortions for body width.

There is a trend in this area of research to use images of the body as seen from the front – corresponding to the view most commonly seen in the mirror. However, being overweight is most obvious in the profile view: a view which can only be imagined without a complex arrangement of mirrors. There is thus a potential for a richer source of information from judgments of the body seen in side view ( Swami and Tovée, 2007 ; Cohen et al., 2015a , b ). We therefore predicted that there would be a difference between viewpoints. Familiar views (as seen in a mirror) were expected to be more accurate than unfamiliar views (side and back views that rely on a person’s imagination to visualize), so that the front view would be the most accurate and the back and side views would be the least accurate.

Sex and body satisfaction were also assessed to see how these factors might impact perceived body size. Men and women show different patterns of perceived body distortion with women being more prone to judge themselves as fatter ( Fallon and Rozin, 1985 ). This asymmetry may even have a basis in the differential roles of the cortical hemispheres in the representation of the body ( Mohr et al., 2007 ). Differences related to both sex and body satisfaction were therefore anticipated, with females and those with higher levels of body dissatisfaction showing greater perceptual distortions. Previous studies looking at body size perception have tended to concentrate on females (e.g., Slade and Russell, 1973 ; Gleghorn et al., 1987 ; Thompson and Spana, 1988 ; Molinari, 1995 ; Cornelissen et al., 2017 ; but see Dolan et al., 1987 ; Craig and Caterson, 1990 ). Thus, there is a relative lack of knowledge about how males represent their bodies and whether they might also show distortions in size perception. Here, we included both males and females. While previous research has shown that perceptual body distortions occur more in those dissatisfied with their bodies (e.g., Cash and Deagle, 1997 ; Probst et al., 1998 ; Stice and Shaw, 2002 ; Hrabosky et al., 2009 ; Mohr et al., 2011 ; Sand et al., 2011 ; Cornelissen et al., 2013 ; Mai et al., 2015 ), these studies have also focused on clinical eating disorder populations with high levels of body dissatisfaction and have often overlooked the healthy population. Based on these previous findings, we thought that there would be differences between low and high body dissatisfaction groups. We expected to find greater distortions for those in the high body dissatisfaction group, especially for the width conditions than for those in the low body dissatisfaction group. We also predicted that there would be strong positive correlations between body dissatisfaction and perceived size distortions.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Thirty-seven participants (18 females and 19 males) took part in the experiment (mean age = 21.24 years, SD = 7.61; mean BMI = 23.75, SD = 4.09; mean weight = 68.94 kg, SD = 14.39 kg; mean height = 169.93 cm, SD = 7.52 cm; mean Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) = 85.27, SD = 33.15). They were recruited from the York University Undergraduate Research Participant Pool and received course credit for taking part in the study. The protocol was approved by the York Ethics Board. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Materials/Stimuli

Body dissatisfaction.

The Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) ( Cooper et al., 1987 ) is a 34-item self-report questionnaire that was developed to assess concerns about body shape and experiences of feeling fat that participants may have experienced within the previous month. The test was administered before the experiment began to obtain a measure of body dissatisfaction. Higher scores indicate higher levels of body dissatisfaction. Participants were divided into high and low groups defined as whether their scores were above or below the overall mean score.

Photographs

Color photographs of each participant’s whole body in standardized poses were taken using a digital camera (Canon EOS 10D; flash on; no zoom function) from each of three different viewpoints with a camera distance of 270 cm. Participants were asked to stand in front of a white wall in three standardized poses. Standardized outfits were provided to obtain accurate outlines of their size and shape (see Figure 1 ). The images were then corrected for any lens distortions, cropped to include only the whole body, and formatted on a white background (Adobe Photoshop CC 2014). These images served as the undistorted reference images and were used for composing distorted images. Actual body height was measured from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head using a ruler taped up to a wall. The image was presented life-size projected (using a BenQ 1080p short throw projector) onto a screen at a viewing distance of 270 cm by digitally adjusting the magnification of the image until it physically matched the participant’s actual body size. The viewing distance was chosen as matching the camera’s focal length multiplied by the magnification ( Cooper et al., 2012 ), which minimizes distortions.

Figure 1 . Experimental design and conditions. Sample images of the full body are shown for each viewpoint: front, side, and back. Width and length dimensions (indicated on the right of the figure) were distorted separately for each of the three viewpoints.

Distorting the Images

Images were presented and distorted using MATLAB (version 2011b) and Psychophysics Toolbox ( Brainard, 1997 ) running on a MacBook Pro. One dimension of the image (either width – see Figure 2A – or length – see Figure 2B ) was distorted (made either bigger or smaller) using a QUEST adaptive staircase psychometric procedure ( Watson and Pelli, 1983 ). The image was viewed in the center of a projector screen with the full body shown from one of three viewpoints: (1) front, (2) side, or (3) back. Perceived width and height were measured separately for each viewpoint so there was a total of six experimental conditions.

Figure 2 . Examples of distorted images. Sample images of the distorted full body are shown for the (A) width and (B) height for each viewpoint - front, side, and back.

Participants sat in a chair at a viewing distance of 270 cm from the projector screen. Each trial consisted of two 1.5 s intervals – one interval containing the undistorted image and one interval containing the distorted image presented in a random order – separated by a blank white screen for 1.5 s. Participants identified which interval contained the image that most closely matched their perception of their own body and responded using a two-button computer mouse (left button for first interval and right button for second interval). A QUEST adaptive staircase procedure ( Watson and Pelli, 1983 ) was used with a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) design to vary the chosen dimension (length or width) of the distorted image ( D’Amour and Harris, 2017 ). Two interleaved QUEST staircases (25 trials per staircase) were used for each condition (50 trials total), with one starting with the manipulated dimension larger than natural and the other starting with that dimension smaller than natural. Each of the six conditions was run in a single block and took approximately 6 min to complete. Condition order was determined by a Latin square and was counterbalanced across participants.

Data Analysis

The QUEST program returned an estimate of the percentage distortion relative to the undistorted at which the participant reported that the distorted image was as like their perceived body size as the undistorted image. The QUEST algorithm assumes the observer’s psychometric function follows a Weibull distribution and adaptively determines the amount of distortion to be presented based on the participant’s response to the previous trials. As the experiment goes on, knowledge on the observer’s psychometric accumulates. Participant’s decisions were plotted against the distortion used for each trial and fitted with a logistic ( Equation 1 ) using the curve fitting toolbox in MATLAB.

where x 0 is the distorted value that was equally likely to be judged as matching the observer’s size as the undistorted photograph, and b is an estimate of the slope of the function. The size of the internal body representation was taken as the point half way between x 0 and the accurate size. We then subtracted 100% from this value to derive a difference-from-accurate score where positive numbers corresponded to an overestimate and negative numbers to an underestimate. The values so obtained for each participant for each condition were examined for outliers, defined as falling outside ±3 standard deviations from the mean. If a value fell outside this range (three participants—two females and one male), the complete dataset for that participant was removed.

One-sample t -tests were conducted for each condition to assess whether difference-from-accurate values significantly differed from zero (accurate). Mixed measures analyses of variances (ANOVAs) were used for statistical analyses, with alpha set at p < 0.05 and post hoc multiple comparisons were made using Bonferroni corrections. Pearson correlations were used to determine the relationship between body dissatisfaction and accuracy. Since we had predicted that there would be a specific direction for the correlations, one-tailed p ’s were used.

Full Body Size Accuracy

Table 1 summarizes the results of t -tests showing that the perceived width when seen from the front and side viewpoints were significantly different from accurate.

Table 1 . One-sample t -tests comparing mean accuracy errors (percentage distortions) to accurate (zero distortion).

Full Body Size Accuracy: Width Dimension

A three-way mixed ANOVA was conducted to test for within-subject effects of viewpoint (front, side, and back), and between-subject effects of sex (male and female) and BSQ group (low and high) for the width dimension ( Figure 3 ). A significant main effect of viewpoint, F (2, 60) = 3.38, p = 0.040, η p 2 = 0.101, and a significant interaction between viewpoint and sex, F (2, 60) = 3.77, p = 0.028, η p 2 = 0.112, were revealed. There was a difference in how width was perceived for the side view, with females showing greater overestimation from the side compared to both the front ( p = 0.017) and back ( p = 0.006) views with no significant difference between front and back views. Females’ side view estimates differed from male side view estimates ( p = 0.019) with males underestimating their width in side view and females overestimating it. No interaction effects were found between viewpoint and BSQ group, F (2, 60) = 0.90, p = 0.413, η p 2 = 0.029, or between viewpoint, sex, and BSQ group, F (2, 60) = 0.56, p = 0.576, η p 2 = 0.018. There were no significant findings in any of the between-subjects effects tests.

Figure 3 . Mean differences from accurate for males ( left panel ) and females ( right panel ) when body width was distorted for each viewpoint. Positive and negative scores represent overestimation and underestimation, respectively. Error bars represent ±1 SEM.

Full Body Size Accuracy: Length (Height) Dimension

A second ANOVA was conducted using the same variables as above for the length (height) dimension ( Figure 4 ). No significant main effects or interactions were found for the within-subjects effects tests. This suggests that perceived body length (height) was not impacted by seeing the body in different views. However, there was a significant interaction between sex and BSQ group, F (1, 30) = 7.51, p = 0.010, η p 2 = 0.200. The high BSQ group differed ( p = 0.026) in the distortion direction for males (overestimate: M = 2.71, SE = 1.72) and females (underestimate: M = −2.59, SE = 1.46). There were also non-significant trends when the high and low BSQ groups were compared for each sex (males: p = 0.075; females: p = 0.051).

Figure 4 . Mean differences from accurate for males ( left panel ) and females ( right panel ) when body length (height) was distorted for each viewpoint. Positive and negative scores represent overestimation and underestimation, respectively. Error bars represent ±1 SEM.

Correlations Between Perceived Full Body Size Accuracy and Body Shape Questionnaire Scores

Pearson correlations were run on the BSQ scores and differences-from-accurate to determine the relationship between body dissatisfaction and perceived size judgments. For the width dimension ( Figure 5 ), there was a strong and significant correlation for the front view, r (33) = 0.310, p = 0.037, and the side view, r (33) = 0.349, p = 0.022, but no relationship was found for the back view, r (33) = 0.099, p = 0.289. There were no significant correlations between perceived size accuracy and BSQ score for the length (height) dimension [front: r (33) = −0.193, p = 0.138; side: r (33) = −0.077, p = 0.333; back: r (33) = −0.100, p = 0.287].

Figure 5 . Correlations between BSQ score and differences from accurate for perceived body width for the front (blue circles), side (purple squares), and back (dark blue triangles) viewpoints ( n = 34). The solid lines through the data represent linear regression fits.

Width and length were measured for the full body from the front, side, and back view in order to obtain baseline accuracy values in a healthy population of males and females. We found that the full body was perceived as thinner (underestimating width) in the front and back views but when the body was viewed from the side, only females overestimated their width. A parallel can be found in emerging sex differences in hand perception where overestimation of hand width is larger in females ( Coelho and Gonzalez, 2019 ; Longo, 2019 ). The height of the body was perceived as accurate. Our results reveal that viewpoint, sex, dimension (height/width), and body satisfaction matter for body representation. These findings provide insights into the mechanisms and factors that are involved in understanding how the body is processed, represented, and perceived.

Overall Accuracy

Our finding that, independent of sex or body dissatisfaction, full body size was perceived as different from actual size when viewed from the front and side view when measured using a rigorous psychophysical method, is a novel finding that adds to the literature about body size accuracy in healthy populations. These results provide baseline measurements of distortions in full body perception at the level of the brain’s implicit body representation. The underestimations in body width that we observed have also been shown in some previous studies (e.g., Gardner et al., 1989 ). The finding that height was perceived accurately in all cases was unexpected because we make continual changes and adjustments to alter the height of our bodies at least as perceived by others such as by wearing heeled shoes, donning hats, and often by styling our hair. A unique feature of this study was that we used life-size photographs which are necessary to measure perceived height. While previous studies have looked at height estimation, they have typically used methods that require participants to make judgments based on apertures or barriers (e.g., Stefanucci and Geuss, 2012 ; Wignall et al., 2017 ), but these indirect measures cannot be applied to understanding the accuracy of the internal representation of body height.

The Effect of Viewpoint

Front and back view.

Our predictions about the effects of viewpoint turned out to be the opposite of what we found. There was a general tendency to underestimate body width for males and females in accordance with Mazzurega et al.’s self-serving bias ( Mazzurega et al., 2018 ). Interestingly, the front view (the view that we often see in a mirror) and the back (a view that we never see) showed the same distortions. And instead of familiar views being the most accurate, the front view actually showed the greatest amount of distortions. This may be a further support for the special relationship that the front and back of the body have with each other. The representations of the front and back of the body may be mapped together by the brain ( Parsons and Shimojo, 1987 ; D’Amour and Harris, 2014 ; Harris et al., 2015 ; Hoover and Harris, 2015 ; Tamè et al., 2016 ). Thus, any distortion of one would be reflected in a comparable distortion of the other (see Figure 3 ).

Females perceived themselves to be wider than actual size only in the side view reminiscent of the female-only “fatter bias” of Mohr et al. (2007) . There are several possible reasons for this. The side view is rarely if ever seen and therefore is most demanding on the viewer’s ability to visualize this view using only their internal representation. It may therefore be the best view with which to measure the size of this representation ( Cohen et al., 2015a ) and the one most able to reveal true distortions. We confirmed that, in this view, women are more likely than men to see themselves as fatter ( Fallon and Rozin, 1985 ), but why might this be the case? Could this be due to the structure and functionality of a woman’s body? We did not ask whether any of our participants had been through pregnancy, and their youthfulness suggests that it would have been rare, but the potential for pregnancy involves an explicit expectation of flexibility in this front/back dimension ( Franchak and Adolph, 2014 ). We speculate that this flexibility and the expectation of future expansion in this dimension, not expected by men, may underlie this sex difference. Another possible explanation is that females may have acquired a general tendency to see themselves as fatter than they really are – an illusion encouraged by any amount of advertising campaigns and the media ( Thompson and Mikellidou, 2011 ; Docteur et al., 2012 ; Shin and Baytar, 2013 ; Gledhill et al., 2019 ). Hashimoto and Iriki (2013) found that slightly slimmer body images were most desirable as own-body images and that this tendency is most pronounced in women ( Cazzato et al., 2012 ).

Another study ( Cornelissen et al., 2018 ) aimed to determine which orientation was best for body size estimation tasks responding to the lack of research on how different viewpoints affect accuracy in body mass judgments. Since the majority of research has only presented the body from the front view, it is unclear whether this is the optimal viewpoint or if important visual cues that people use for size judgments are being obscured, such as stomach depth ( Tovée et al., 1999 ; Smith et al., 2007 ; Rilling et al., 2009 ) and thickness of the thighs and buttocks ( Cornelissen et al., 2009 , 2016 ; Cohen et al., 2015a , b ). While their study used computer-generated generic images and did not ask for own-body size judgments, they found a loss in precision for front view stimuli compared to both three-quarter and side views ( Cornelissen et al., 2018 ) which supports our current findings.

Sex and Body Satisfaction Scores

We have shown that distortions exist in both sexes for both low and high body dissatisfaction groups. Although there was surprisingly no effect of BSQ group on perceived width, there was a difference for perceived height between the males and females that were more dissatisfied with their bodies. On average across all three viewpoints, males in the high BSQ group perceived an increase in height, whereas females perceived a decrease. This finding could be due to attitudinal and societal factors that are experienced by each sex. When the relationship between BSQ score and perceived size accuracy was examined, it was revealed that higher body dissatisfaction showed greater distortions in perceived width for the front and side views. This is in agreement with Mazzurega et al. (2018) who related such findings to body attractiveness and what they called the self-serving bias. This bias is weaker in people who are less satisfied with their body and may result in greater distortions. It is difficult to compare our findings with previous studies since we used a population of healthy males and females and therefore had a much smaller range of BSQ scores than would be seen in females with eating disorders. Another potential limitation is that our sample size was quite small for conducting correlations and that we had an unequal amount of people in the low and high BSQ groups.

Our results are important because they assess the internal representation of body dimensions independent of distortions of the body image. To extend our study and further the research done to gain knowledge about how the brain represents the body, future studies using 3D full body images/avatars should be done with our method to obtain more details about the brain’s modeling and mapping of body size, shape, and structure. Other potential research that could be beneficial for comparing and contrasting with our findings (and all previous literature) would be to use our method in different experimental designs, such as testing the effects of image size, distorting both dimensions at once, distorting only particular parts of the full body, or testing a greater range of viewpoints. Findings from such lines of research could be used to develop programs to retune body representations not only in clinical populations but also for athletes and dancers where accurate body representation is particularly critical.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the York Ethics Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

Author Contributions

SD’A conceived the study and designed the experimental methodology. SD’A and LH devised and created the experimental methods, stimuli, and programming. SD’A performed the experiment and collected the data. SD’A analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. Both authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) grant #46271-2015 to LH. SD’A was supported by a PGS-D3 NSERC Graduate Scholarship and an NSERC CREATE Grant.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: body representation, perceived size, full body perception, viewpoint, perceptual size distortions, height, body width

Citation: D’Amour S and Harris LR (2019) The Representation of Body Size: Variations With Viewpoint and Sex. Front. Psychol . 10:2805. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02805

Received: 24 August 2019; Accepted: 28 November 2019; Published: 17 December 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 D’Amour and Harris. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Sarah D’Amour, [email protected]

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Medical Visualization Using 3D Imaging and Volume Data: A Survey

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In the medical field, the visualization of several body parts is essential to understand the internal functions of the anatomical framework of the body. In this survey article, we review medical visualization and many techniques to create visual representations for medical applications. The main techniques employed are X-ray imaging, Positron Emission Technique (PET), Single Photon Emission Computer Tomography (SPECT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Ultrasound, and many others. Radiosurgery involves the use of radiation to destroy selected areas affected by cancer. Ionizing radiation such as Photon and Proton beam is used to treat cancer. The advanced forms of digital imaging can give a representation of both 2D and 3D. Several scans are combined as volume data to produce numerous images simultaneously. It is important to understand the best ways in which medical practitioners can diagnose their patients in the most accurate method and give the best advice on the treatment.

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Bahkali, I., Semwal, S.K. (2021). Medical Visualization Using 3D Imaging and Volume Data: A Survey. In: Arai, K., Kapoor, S., Bhatia, R. (eds) Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2020, Volume 3. FTC 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1290. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63092-8_17

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We purposely created this free online tool to be uncomplicated and user-friendly, because you don’t need any added stress in your life! Let’s take things step by step on how to efficiently use this height comparison tool. Stick around to get the scoop on the multiple scenarios and reasons you can utilize this tool!

Step 1: Gathering your Measurements & Subjects

You can jump in and play around with measurements just for giggles, but if you’re looking to get an accurate take on a measuring scenario it would be best to know what you want to measure and what its measurements are ahead of time. If you aren’t sure of an exact measurement, you can always do a quick Google search or use your best guess!

Step 2: Entering your Data

Time to punch in some numbers! As you’ll soon see, the Height Comparison website is very neat, organized, and simplistic, it’s designed this way to make this a breathable and enjoyable experience.

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• For the human subject, you can customize their gender and name if you so please, and then but of course enter in their height in either feet (ft) or centimeters (cm). Plus, you can even pick out a color for them to be on the chart! Once you have put in those 4 simple details, you can submit the blue rectangle at the bottom of that panel that reads + Add Person . They then will appear on the chart, ready for height comparison!
• Below the human subject panel is the Add Object panel. Here, you can choose from objects such as a closet, door, car, couch, or pick from a circle or rectangle shape to be able to customize the size.

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Tip: You can adjust the size and height of the circle and rectangle by selecting its panel on the top-left side of the chart.

If you’d like to remove an object from the chart, simply select the close button next to the objects title and they’ll disappear; much like when you select the close button to get out of an internet page! Our height comparison chart shows the result in both cm and feet and inch.

Step 3: Compare, Plan, Have Fun!

Once you’ve got your people and or objects hanging out on the chart you can start your planning or fun comparing. This tool automatically converts measurements to centimeters to feet, and the other way around if you’d like. We provide measuring that you can trust!

Are you wondering what you could use this tool for? Follow down below in the next section!

Why Use This Height Comparison Chart?

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Easily utilize this site as way to plan out your dream design by measuring out furniture you want to move in or the size of remodels you want to make.

Comparing Heights

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Body Shape Calculator

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What body shape am I - is it an hourglass, a triangle, or maybe a rectangle? If this question troubles you, we have a solution - a foolproof body type calculator that only needs a few seconds to give you a clear answer. Instead of analyzing your reflection in the mirror and wondering which shape it resembles the most, we give you a fast and reliable way to determine what is your body type . Just input your measurements into the body shape calculator and let it classify you into one of the seven most popular groups.

Make sure to also calculate your ideal weight and BMI too! You can also use our maintenance calorie calculator to find out how many calories your body needs to maintain your current weight.

How to take measurements

Our body shape calculator needs four measurements to determine your body type accurately. You can use the measurements you took for the body fat calculator .

• Bust : measure at the fullest point of your bust with a soft measuring tape. Make sure that the tape is not too tight by breathing in and out.
• Waist : your waist is the narrowest part of your torso. The measuring tape you bring around your waist should sit tightly, but it shouldn't "dig" into your skin. Don't pull your stomach in, either.
• Hips : you measure your hips at the widest point below your waist. Remember to remove your clothing and keep your feet together so that the measurement is as accurate as possible.
• High hip : this is also a hip measurement but taken in a different place than the previous one. It is taken at the top of the hip curve - not at its widest point! You need to localize the upper swell of the hip over your pelvic bone.

It doesn't matter which units you use for the measurement - our body type calculator deals equally well with imperial and metric units.

What is my body type?

Our body shape calculator will classify your body into one of the seven most popular types . Naturally, not all women falling into one category are the same.

• Hourglass : this body shape is balanced and harmonious. The bust and hips are proportional and well-balanced, and the waist is clearly defined.
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• Spoon : if you're a spoon, your hips are much larger than your bust. Your hips have a shelf-like appearance, and you have a well defined waist.
• Triangle : triangles have a slim upper body and wide hips (typically wider than the shoulders). Their waist is not clearly accentuated.
• Inverted triangle : inverted triangles have a subtle waist and a proportionally larger upper body. Your bust and shoulders are pretty broad, and the hips are slim.
• Rectangle : your hips, waist, and bust are about the same size. Your body is well proportioned and athletic in appearance.

Now that you have solved the pressing issue of "What body shape am I?", you can use this knowledge for your benefit. Making informed choices while dressing or shopping for clothes will surely make you a more confident person!

🙋 When it comes to the physical aspects of ourselves, comparing comes easily. Modern culture doesn't make it easier as well. Sometimes, you might even forget, that your body primarily allows you to do all those amazing things in the world . You can move from place to place, learn, feel the sensations, experience the environment, and create bonds with your loved ones because you exist in this world in your body. Appreciate what it does for you everyday!

What is the most common body shape?

The most common body shape is a rectangle, which makes up 46% of women . A rectangle is a woman whose waist is less than nine inches smaller than their hips or bust. Next are the bottom-heavy 'spoons' , whose hips are two or more inches larger than their busts. These account for approximately 20% of the female population. Third are the inverted triangles , making up about 14% of the population. These are women whose busts are three or more inches larger than their hips. Finally are the hourglasses , women who have a roughly equal hip and bust, with a narrower waist. These women make up about 8%.

Does a woman's body shape change with age?

Yes, as a woman ages, the concentrations of hormones in her body will alter, causing her body shape to change . The first changes occur at puberty . Pre-pubescent boys and girls have a similar hip-waist ratio, but the large amounts of estrogen produced at the onset of puberty cause a female's hips to widen and breasts to develop. Estrogen also causes fat to be stored in the buttocks, thighs, and hips. Pregnancy causes estrogen levels to rise again , causing the breasts to enlarge, although this is generally reversed after pregnancy. At the onset of menopause, the decreased estrogen levels cause a woman’s breasts to shrink, as well as the redistribution of fat to the waist or abdomen.

Can you change your body shape?

Once you have finished puberty, it is largely impossible to change your body shape - your bone structure and proportions are mostly defined . There are however some changes that can be made. Gaining or losing fat will change the size of your buttocks, thighs, and hips if you are a premenopausal woman, or the size of your waist and abdomen if you are a man or post-menopausal woman. Gaining muscle mass is another way of altering your shape - by targeting particular muscle groups you can accentuate them, e.g., your shoulders to look more athletic, your hamstrings and glutes for longer-looking legs.

There are three body types: ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph . If you are lean and long, find it challenging to build muscle, and have ever been accused of being a ‘beanpole’, you’re probably an ectomorph. If you tend to be on the heavier side and find it difficult to lose body fat, you are likely an endomorph. If you find it easy to gain muscle and have a high metabolism, you may be a mesomorph. However, please be aware that you are unlikely to be strictly one of these body types, and they exist as a scale between all of them . Think of it as a triangle.

What are the 3 main body types?

The three main somatotypes are ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph . Ectomorphs tend to be tall and slight of build and find it difficult to gain weight. Your favorite basketball player is most likely an ectomorph. Endomorphs , on the other hand, have no problem gaining weight and tend to have a lot of muscle and fat . They are not always overweight, though - Marylin Monroe was an endomorph. The last type is mesomorphs, what you will typically picture when you think of an athlete . They are strong and tend to have a high metabolism. Don’t forget, though, that everyone exists as a mix of different proportions of all three types.

What are the 5 female body types?

The 5 main female body types are as follows:

• Rectangle - A rectangle is a woman whose body shape has waist measurements less than 9 inches smaller than the hip or bust measurements. So, you are not particularly curvy, your waist is not well-defined, and your weight is fairly distributed throughout the body. This shape of the body is also called the straight or ruler body.
• Triangle - Aka pear, hips wider than bust, defined bust but not waist, proportionately slim arms, and shoulders, weight is distributed to bottom and legs rather than upper body.
• Hourglass - Hip and bust measurements are nearly equal, while the waist is narrower.
• Spoon - Hips are much larger than bust, with a clearly defined waist. Hips are shelf-like.
• Inverted triangle - Narrow waist with shoulders and bust much wider than hips.

What is the meaning of 36 24 36 figure?

A 36 24 36 figure is a type of hourglass figure . The three numbers each refer to a specific measurement of a woman's body. The first is the bust, measured around the fullest point of the chest. The next measurement is the waist, which is the narrowest part of a relaxed torso. The final measurement is around the hips, the widest point below the waist when both feet are together. The 36 24 36 figure is measured in inches, and in centimeters is known as the 90 60 90 figure .

What is a healthy waist size?

A healthy waist size will depend on your height, but if your waist exceeds 31.5 in (80 cm) as a woman or 37 in (94 cm) as a man, you should try to lose weight, regardless of your height or BMI. The waist is defined as the narrowest part of the body between the hips and ribs. The World Health Organisation states that an absolute waist circumference greater than 40 in (102 cm) for men and 35 in (88 cm) for women means that that person is obese . Obesity is also defined as a waist-hip ratio greater than 0.9 for males and 0.85 for females. You can check yours with our waist-hip ratio calculator. People who are obese suffer from an increased risk of diabetes, asthma, and Alzheimers, among other problems.

Does your body shape change when you lose weight?

Yes, your body shape does change when you lose weight . If you are female , your body will naturally store weight on your buttocks, thighs, and hips due to the estrogen present in your body. By losing weight, these areas will become slimmer. If you are male , your body will store its fat on your stomach . Losing weight can help you shift that beer belly.

What is a zero figure?

A zero figure , or a size zero is a women’s clothing size in the US clothing sizes system . It is a size that fits measurement of bust/waist/hips anywhere between 30 22 32 inches (76 56 81 cm) to 36 28 36 inches (90 71.5 90 cm) , depending on the style and make. Originally a size 8 in 1958, it is now known as a size 0 due to vanity sizing. Zero figure is often associated with anorexia. If you or others around you are worried that you may be underweight, please consult a doctor .

Measure at the fullest point of your bust with a soft measuring tape. Make sure that the tape is not too tight by breathing in and out.

Your waist is the narrowest part of your torso. The measuring tape you bring around your waist should sit tightly, but it shouldn't "dig" into your skin. Don't pull your stomach in, either.

It is taken at the top of the hip curve - not at its widest point! You need to localize the upper swell of the hip over your pelvic bone.

Measure your hips at the widest point below your waist. Remember to remove your clothing and keep your feet together so that the measurement is as accurate as possible.

Are you searching for a perfect swimsuit for your body shape? Check out our bikini calculator !

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• Open access
• Published: 11 November 2022

The role of hand size in body representation: a developmental investigation

• Dorothy Cowie 1 ,
• Janna M. Gottwald   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5497-4001 2 ,
• Laura-Ashleigh Bird 1 &
• Andrew J. Bremner   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4119-3748 3  

Scientific Reports volume  12 , Article number:  19281 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour
• Sensory processing

Knowledge of one’s own body size is a crucial facet of body representation, both for acting on the environment and perhaps also for constraining body ownership. However, representations of body size may be somewhat plastic, particularly to allow for physical growth in childhood. Here we report a developmental investigation into the role of hand size in body representation (the sense of body ownership, perception of hand position, and perception of own-hand size). Using the rubber hand illusion paradigm, this study used different fake hand sizes (60%, 80%, 100%, 120% or 140% of typical size) in three age groups (6- to 7-year-olds, 12- to 13-year-olds, and adults; N  = 229). We found no evidence that hand size constrains ownership or position: participants embodied hands which were both larger and smaller than their own, and indeed judged their own hands to have changed size following the illusion. Children and adolescents embodied the fake hands more than adults, with a greater tendency to feel their own hand had changed size. Adolescents were particularly sensitive to multisensory information. In sum, we found substantial plasticity in the representation of own-body size, with partial support for the hypothesis that children have looser representations than adults.

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Perceptual Representation of Own Hand Size in Early Childhood and Adulthood

Hand size underestimation grows during childhood

Perception of the non-dominant hand as larger after non-judgmental focus on its details

Introduction.

Perceiving one’s own body is fundamental to human experience, both for acting skillfully in our environments and for distinguishing between oneself and others. Yet own-body representation is complex 1 , involving the integration of prior knowledge about the body with incoming sensory inputs across multiple senses 2 . An important type of prior knowledge concerns the visual sizes of one’s body and limbs. This is particularly important to successfully move with respect to goals and obstacles in the environment. There are also indications that limb size affects adults’ sense of embodiment of a limb, suggesting that adults have prior expectations about it 3 . However, unlike other key visual cues to embodiment, body sizes—as well as sensory systems—change considerably over development 4 . This therefore raises questions about how such cues develop. The current study undertook a systematic investigation of how hand size affects hand embodiment and action-oriented judgments across childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood. We tested the hypothesis that hand size places less constraint on experiences of embodiment earlier in life, becoming an increasingly important constraint with age and experience. This would allow young children a greater level of acceptance of different hand sizes in the context of rapid physical growth, while providing adults with useful constraints on what they embody.

Childhood sees broad shifts in how sensory information is used to establish a sense of body ownership. While children from around 5–10 years of age use multisensory cues to identify and localize body parts 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , they also show much stronger responses to bodily illusions than adults 6 . This likely results from high visual capture, such that correctly-oriented, body-like, objects in near space tend to be perceived as one’s own 5 , 9 Young children are not only subject to these sensory changes, but to rapid and significant bodily growth (~ 1.3 cm in hand length per year 6 ). This necessitates frequent recalibration between seen and felt hand positions 11 , until hand growth slows and stabilizes in the teenage years (the discrepancy between average 12–13-year-old hands and adults’ is less than 1cm 6 ).

How, during such significant sensory and bodily changes, could a child use hand size to perceive and identify their own body? It might function as a high-level constraint such that prior expectation regarding hand size shapes the processing of incoming sensory information about nearby body parts 12 . Indeed, for competent motor control alone, one would expect children to have some expectations regarding own-hand size. On the other hand, one might predict a degree of plasticity in children’s hand representation. Since hands grow but do not shrink, one might expect participants to accept larger but not smaller hands than their own 13 . Particularly around 5–10 years of age, because of the sensory changes and bodily growth detailed above, there might be enhanced plasticity. This would allow children to accept their growing hand as their own; it would also make them more susceptible to illusions of ownership over differently-sized hands. In summary, one might expect some plasticity in hand size representation at all ages, and for children to represent hand size more loosely than adolescents or adults.

To examine hand size as a cue to embodiment, many studies have used versions of the classic Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), in which adults and children from 4–5 years of age report that a fake hand feels as if it is their own when they view stroking on it as they feel strokes on their own, hidden, hand 5 , 14 , 15 , 16 . Across a few minutes, a “drift” in perceived hand location towards the fake hand grows, along with a more explicit sense that it is part of the participant’s body (“ownership”). Crucially, if the appearance of the fake hand is altered, the illusion is reduced 17 , 18 , suggesting that prior expectations about body form gate incoming sensory information 14 . While there have been some recent challenges to this paradigm which appeal to the demand characteristics of the illusion 19 , these do not seem able to account for all of the reported effects 20 .

RHI studies with adults reveal a need for more work on how hand size may constrain embodiment. Some work shows that adults can embody larger, but not smaller, hands—in terms of drift 3 , changes to grip aperture 21 , or the perception of tactile stimuli 22 . This pattern of findings is termed the ‘rubber band hypothesis’ given the analogy that both limb representations and rubber bands can more easily be stretched than compressed 22 . There is however scant data from these studies on how hand size affects hand ownership . Further, some reports showed that tactile stimulus judgments 23 or ownership ratings 24 can be altered by either large or small fake hands. Finally, irrespective of how hand size may initially constrain ownership over a fake hand, feeling ownership over a larger fake hand may change the perceived size of one’s own hand 24 . In sum, to understand how hand size constrains embodiment in adults there is a need for more data on explicit ownership and its relation to subjective reports of hand size. Further, to reveal any more nuanced tuning function between hand size and ownership, there is a need for studies to use a range of hand sizes rather than simply one ‘large’ or ‘small’ hand.

Some work has investigated how children perceive and embody hands of different sizes. When asked to visually match the size of their own hidden hand to a viewed hand 4 , 25 , children substantially underestimated their hand size compared to adults. For 8–15-year-olds presented with illusory finger growth through a Mirage box, over 80% agreed with the statement that their finger had “really stretched” ( 26 , see also 27 ). An RHI study with 6–8-year-olds found somewhat equivocal results: high ownership for both medium and large fake hands 9 , but marginally higher drift in perceived hand location for a medium hand. In the absence of additional hand sizes or ages, we cannot draw wider conclusions from this study regarding the more specific effects of hand size and age on embodiment (for example, whether any difference in drift was due to a differently -sized hand or specifically a larger hand; whether or not children are similar to adults). A large study 12 found feelings of ownership over both small and large fake hands; however, different ages received proportionally different fake hand sizes and there was no comparison medium hand. Their result that ownership over a small hand decreased with age strongly motivates further targeted developmental work. Finally, this study demonstrates the strength of action-based measures of perceived hand size following the RHI: participants of all ages judged they could fit their hands through larger spaces following an RHI with a large fake hand.

Taken together, these developmental studies are consistent with the hypothesis that children more readily embody differently-sized hands than adults, but also clearly illustrate the need for additional systematic investigation. We suggest that further work should use a range of both smaller and larger fake hand sizes, scaling in proportion to hand size at each age. There is also a need for more systematic investigation of age effects. From the results reviewed above, we know that children of 6–9 years respond more strongly to the basic RHI than older children or adults 5 . Further, at this age the hand is still growing at over 1 cm per year. Children of this age are therefore an important group to test, and it seems sensible to focus on the youngest age band within this, 6–7 years, since this is the most likely to differ from adults. By 12–13 years, hand growth has slowed to < 1 cm per year and sensory integration is adultlike 6 , 11 , 28 . This group is therefore also important, as it may be on the cusp of adult-like responses. As noted, further work is also needed on adults. In sum, sampling at 6–7 years, 12–13 years, and adults should reveal any developmental progression from the period of rapid sensory and physical change in mid-childhood through to a more adultlike state in early adolescence; as well as the full adult profile.

Here we report such a RHI study in which we compared embodiment of a range of different sizes of fake hands in 6–7-year-olds, 12–13-year-olds and adults. At each age, we compared, between-subjects, the effect of five hand sizes, representing 60, 80, 100, 120 and 140% of mean hand size for that group, as measured from previous samples 6 . By testing this series of graded sizes, we hoped to reveal any tuning function between hand size and embodiment. By examining three age groups, we tested whether and how this tuning might change with age. To examine how prior expectations regarding hand size might interact with visuotactile multisensory information, we compared responses across synchronous and asynchronous stroking conditions. We measured ownership over a fake hand, touch referral to it, and the subjective sense of whether one’s own hand had changed size 24 . Alongside these questions 6 , 8 , 9 , we took action-oriented judgements following the illusion: the drift in participants’ perceived hand location towards the fake hand 5 , and the perceived size of the hand in an affordance judgment task 12 .

We interrogated the data according to several key questions. First, we examined the extent to which the different age groups showed tuning of our measures to hand size: specifically, whether the influence of the fake hand declined with greater size discrepancies between the fake and real hand. We hypothesized that the precision of this tuning would increase with age. Next, we tested the claim arising from the literature 22 that embodiment would be stronger for fake hands which are own-sized or larger than for those which are smaller. Finally, we expected that visuotactile synchrony would effect our measures at all ages and that visual capture of hand position would be greatest at 6–7 years (as in 5 , 6 ).

In this experiment we examined the effects of three factors on the embodiment of a fake hand. Age, a between-subjects factor, had 3 levels (6–7-year-olds, 12–13-year-olds, and adults). Hand size, a between-subjects factor, had 5 levels (XS, S, M, L, XL: details below). Synchrony, a within-subjects factor, had two levels (synchronous and asynchronous: details below).

All participants were recruited and tested in the U.K. Eighty-one 6- to 7-year-olds (45 girls, 36 boys, mean age 7.14 years, SD 0.31) and 77 12- to 13-year-olds (49 girls, 28 boys, mean age 13.16 years, SD 0.49) were recruited through local schools and our departmental database of local volunteer families. Seventy-five adults (48 women, 27 men, age range 18–54 years, mean age 22.14 years, SD 6.07) were recruited through the university’s study participant pool and word-of-mouth communication. The data of two 6–7-year-olds and two 12- to 13-year-olds were excluded due to inattentiveness, a reported ASD diagnosis, or monocular vision. All included data therefore came from participants with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and with no known sensory, neurological or neurodevelopmental problems. Before testing, informed consent was obtained from the adult participants, and from the parents of child participants. For the child shown in Fig.  1 , we obtained informed consent for the publication of identifying information/images in an online open-access publication. All experiments were approved by the Durham University Psychology Department Ethics committee (project reference 16/01) and were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments (World Medical Association, 2013).

Procedure. Baseline : eyes closed, pointing under table to hand (inset). Illusion : stroking with brushes. Post-illusion pointing : eyes closed, pointing under table to hand (inset). Illusion & post-illusion points repeat (see “ Methods ”). Affordance : judging the size of an aperture the hand can fit through. Questions (see “ Methods ”). Fake hand for illustration only—see Fig.  2 for actual hands used.

We used a very similar procedure as in previous RHI studies with children 5 , 8 . At the beginning of each trial, the participant had their right hand placed under the table to their right side. The distance between their hand and their body’s midline was 50% of their arm length. (Throughout the procedure, we used each participant’s arm length to scale the setup, to keep motor demands constant for participants of different body sizes).

The experiment started with a training phase. Participants were asked to place their left hand on the table, roughly at body midline. Then they were asked to slide their right index finger horizontally along a groove under the table to point underneath their left index finger. This was done to train participants to point by sliding the finger, without looking, and to check that points were roughly underneath their finger.

We continued (Fig.  1 ) with two baseline trials. The left hand was placed on the table at a distance of 25% arm length from body midline. A screen was placed in between body midline and the left hand, so that it blocked the participant’s view of the left hand. The participant was asked to close their eyes, and again point with their right index finger underneath their left index finger. An experimenter marked the participant’s pointing position on a strip of paper underneath the table. This baseline procedure was repeated for a second trial. After this, the participant was asked to give the experimenter a “high-five” with their left hand: this was designed to reduce possible carry-over motor memory effects regarding hand position from baseline to the subsequent test trials.

There were two further experimental blocks: one where visuotactile information was synchronous and one where it was asynchronous. The order of these was counterbalanced across participants. In each block, a plaster-cast fake hand, painted a light skin colour, was placed in front of the participant at their body midline. The size of the fake hand was varied across participants. The hand was either 60%, 80%, 100%, 120% or 140% of their age group’s average hand size, as measured from previous datasets 6 : these were labelled as XS, S, M, L, and XL respectively. Again based on previous datasets, the 12–13-year-old group were given the same set of fake hand sizes as the adults, while the 6–7-year-olds were given a smaller set of fake hands. The range of sizes is shown in Table 1 and illustrated for the 6–7-year-olds in Fig.  2 . We used plaster-cast hands cast from real hands, except for the largest, which was 3D-printed.

Fake hands. To illustrate the appearance of the fake hands, this figure shows the set used for 6–7-year-olds. A corresponding second set was used for the other two groups.

Each block contained three test trials. On each of these, the participant closed their eyes and placed their hands at the same locations as at baseline. A cloth was placed to cover the left shoulder, left arm and the empty space between the fake hand and the body. The participant opened their eyes and observed the experimenter stroking the fake hand and the real hand with paintbrushes for 2 min. During the synchronous stroking condition, the experimenter stroked the real and fake hands at the same time and in the same location (e.g. upper index finger). During the asynchronous condition, the experimenter alternated strokes on the real and fake hands, stroking at different times and in different locations. In both conditions, strokes were given at roughly 1 Hz, and were short ‘dabs’ which covered a very small area of the finger. This was done to equalize the amount of sensory information available in each condition, since stroking the whole or half length of the finger would have resulted in much longer strokes for larger hands. After stroking had finished, the participant was asked again to close their eyes and point underneath their left index finger. This was repeated for two shorter trials, each containing a 20-s period of stroking followed by a point.

With the participant’s left hand remaining on the table, and their right hand in their lap, the affordance task was performed. We placed a simple device on the table in front of them, in which a screen could be drawn upwards to reveal a gap. We asked them to imagine giving a high-five with their upright left hand. As we slowly (~ 1 cm/s) increased the size of the gap, the participant was asked to say ‘stop’ when their left hand would just fit through the gap. We noted the size of the gap without providing feedback to them.

Thereafter, participants answered the following four questions: 1. “When I was stroking with the paintbrush, did it sometimes seem as if you could feel the touch of the brush where the fake hand was?”, 2. “When I was stroking with the paintbrush, did you sometimes feel like the fake hand was your hand, or belonged to you?”, 3. “When I was stroking with the paintbrush, did you sometimes feel like your own hand got bigger?” and 4. “When I was stroking with the paintbrush, did you sometimes feel like your own hand got smaller?”. The answer scale (coded from 0 to 6) was: “No, definitely not”/ “No”/ “No, not really”/ “In between”/ “Yes, a little”/ “Yes, a lot”/ “Yes, lots and lots”.

At the end of the first experimental block, participants were asked to pick a sticker from a box, with the hand movement preventing motor memory from one block to the next. The second block (synchronous/ asynchronous) was then performed.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the regional ethics committee (assessment number Psychology 16/01) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from the parents of all individual child participants included in the study, and from all individual adult participants.

Analysis overview

We first present the responses to the questionnaire items, then the action-oriented measures of the aperture task and proprioceptive drift. Before submitting our ordinal questionnaire data to ANOVA, we used an Aligned Rank Transform procedure 29 . This method provides a bridge between parametric and non-parametric testing, by aligning and ranking raw data which can then be submitted to standard ANOVA. Importantly, this allows us to test for the presence of interactions in the data. For each questionnaire item, we conducted two ANOVAs on the aligned, ranked data. The first, ‘omnibus’, ANOVA examined the factors Hand Size (XS, S, M, L, XL), Synchrony (Synchronous, Asynchronous), and Age (Child, Adolescent, Adult). The second, ‘directed’ ANOVA tested the hypothesis that actual-sized or larger hands would more easily embodied than smaller, by grouping hand size into two levels. The factors for this are therefore Hand Size (XS, S vs. M, L, XL), Synchrony, and Age. From this directed analysis we do not repeat all effects but rather simply present the effects of interest, which are Hand Size and its interactions. For analyses of aperture judgments and proprioceptive drift we examine the effects of Hand Size, Synchrony and Age using standard ANOVA. For measures where we expected the participant’s response to change linearly as a function of fake hand size (‘my hand felt bigger’, ‘my hand felt smaller’, affordance task), we report the linear contrasts of Hand Size as well as its main effect.

Question: touch referral to fake hand

In the omnibus analysis for this item (Fig.  3 ), we found a main effect of Age, (F(2,214) = 14.2, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.117), with post-hoc Tukey HSD tests showing that both children (M = 3.72; p  < .001) and adolescents (M = 3.69; p  > .001) gave higher ratings than adults (M = 2.89). In addition, we found an effect of Synchrony, (F(1,214) = 201.5, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.485), such that mean scores were higher for the synchronous (M = 4.22) than the asynchronous (M = 2.65) condition. Finally, we found an Age by Synchrony interaction, (F(1,214) = 201.5, p  < .001 η p 2  = 0.097. To follow this up, we used Sidak-corrected pairwise comparisons in a simple effects analysis. Since values from the Aligned Ranked Transform should not be used here 29 , this and subsequent simple effects analyses are based on raw questionnaire data. This analysis showed age-related changes in the asynchronous condition, such that responses were lower in this condition for adults than children, p  = .001, and adolescents, p  = .001. No other effects or interactions were significant. In the directed analysis, with smaller vs. larger hands, we found no effect of hand size or interactions of hand size with other factors (F’s < 2.317, p ’s > .129).

Touch referral. This figure shows the medians and interquartile ranges of ratings on the questionnaire item regarding touch referral to the fake hand. Ratings are shown for each age group, fake hand size, and condition.

Question: ownership of fake hand

In the omnibus analysis for this item (Fig.  4 ) we again we found a main effect of Age (F(2,214) = 4.185, p  = .016, η p 2  = 0.824). Adolescents (M = 3.29) gave higher ratings than adults (M = 2.64; p  = .012), while children (M = 2.87) were not significantly different to either. We found an effect of Synchrony (F(1,214) = 201.5, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.332), such that mean scores were higher for the synchronous (M = 3.63) than the asynchronous (M = 2.24) condition. Finally, we found an Age x Synchrony interaction (F(1,214) = 201.5, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.054). To examine this, Sidak-corrected pairwise comparisons in a simple effects analysis showed that in the Synchronous condition children gave higher responses than adolescents, p  = .032, while in the Asynchronous condition, adults gave lower ratings than either children, p  = .008, or adolescents, p  = .003. As for touch, therefore, the effects of age were more prominent in the asynchronous condition. No other effects or interactions were significant. In the directed analysis, with smaller vs. larger hands, we found no effect of hand size or interactions of hand size with other factors (F’s < 1.22 s, p ’s > .270).

Ownership. This figure shows the medians and interquartile ranges of ratings on the questionnaire item regarding ownership of the fake hand. Ratings are shown for each age group, fake hand size, and condition.

Question: hand felt larger than usual

In the omnibus analysis for this item (Fig.  5 ) we found an effect of Age (F(2,214) = 3.23, p  = .042, η p 2  = 0.029), such that adolescents (M = 2.46) gave higher ratings than adults (M = 1.81; p  = .036), while children (M = 2.16) were not significantly different to either. No other effects or contrasts were significant. In the directed analysis with small vs. larger hands, we found no effect of hand size or interactions of hand size with other factors (F’s < 3.02, p ’s > .084).

Hand felt larger. This figure shows the medians and interquartile ranges of ratings on the questionnaire item regarding one’s own hand feeling larger following the illusion. Ratings are shown for each age group, fake hand size, and condition.

Question: hand felt smaller than usual

In the omnibus analysis for this item (Fig.  6 ) we found an effect of Age (F(2,214) = 8.168, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.071), such that children (M = 2.29; p  = .001) and adolescents (M = 2.08; p  = .002) gave higher ratings than adults (M = 1.39). In addition we found an effect of Hand Size (F(4,214) = 3.105, p  = .016, η p 2  = 0.055), with a linear contrast of p  = .011, such that responses were higher in the XS condition (M = 2.47) than in the S (M = 1.74; p  = .036) or XL (M = 1.64; p  = .017) conditions.

Hand felt smaller. This figure shows the medians and interquartile ranges of ratings on the questionnaire item regarding one’s own hand feeling smaller following the illusion. Ratings are shown for each age group, fake hand size, and condition.

Finally, we found a three-way interaction between Age, Hand Size and Synchrony, (F(8,214) = 2.229, p  = .027, η p 2  = 0.077), see Fig.  6 . Examining this, Sidak-corrected pairwise comparisons in a simple effects analysis showed that for adolescents in the synchronous condition, responses were higher in the XS than in the XL condition, p  = .002. Likewise for adolescents, responses were lower for synchronous stroking than asynchronous with the XL hand, p  = .005.

These comparisons also showed that adults tended towards lower responses (less feeling that their hand was smaller) than other groups at larger hand sizes. Thus, adults’ responses were lower than adolescents’ in the medium hand-asynchronous condition p  = .039 and large hand-synchronous condition, p  = .035; and lower than children’s in the large hand-synchronous condition, p  < .001. Finally, and contrary to prediction, we found that children showed higher responses (more feeling that their hand was smaller) in the synchronous than the asynchronous condition for the large hand, p  = .018.

The directed analysis with small vs. larger hands, again revealed a three-way interaction between Age, Hand Size and Synchrony, (F(2,223) = 6.454, p  = .002, η p 2  = 0.055), but no other effects or interactions of Hand Size.

Affordance judgments

In this task the participant watched the experimenter slowly open a simple rectangular aperture between a base (small platform around eye level) and a thin sheet of a wood which lifted up (Fig.  1 ). The participant told them to stop opening it when they felt that their hand could just pass through. The resulting gap size is therefore an index of the participant’s estimated hand size following the illusion. The magnitude of the gap size (Fig.  7 ) was affected by Age, (F(2,214) = 89.849, p  < .001), as would be expected given that children’s hands could fit through smaller gaps than adults’. While there was no main effect of Size, p  = .064, the more specific linear contrast was significant, p  = .021, such that the action-oriented estimate of one’s own hand size was smaller after viewing small fake hands and larger after viewing large fake hands.

Affordance judgment. This figure shows the means and standard errors of affordance judgments, for each age group, fake hand size, and condition.

Participants tended to underestimate hand size (scores were below zero). To quantify this, we calculated the discrepancy between each participant’s affordance estimate and their actual hand size, scaled as a percentage of each participant’s own-hand-size. On this measure we found an effect of Age only (F(2,214) = 7.348, p  <  .001, η p 2  = 0.064). Post-hoc Tukey HSD tests showed that, irrespective of stroking condition or hand size, children underestimated their hand size more than either adolescents ( p  = .002) or adults ( p  = .006).

Proprioceptive drift

For this measure in the omnibus analysis (Fig.  8 ), we found an effect of Age, (F(2,214) = 4.938, p  = .008, η p 2  = 0.044). Post-hoc Tukey HSD comparisons showed higher drift in 6–7yo compared with adults ( p  = .032) and in 12–13yo compared with adults ( p  = .011). In addition, we found an effect of Synchrony, (F(1,214) = 16.58, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.072), such that mean drift was higher for the synchronous than the asynchronous condition. The directed analysis for this measure likewise showed effects of Synchrony, (F(1,223) = 15.377, p  < .001, η p 2  = 0.072), and Age, (F(2,223) = 4.448, p  = .013, η p 2  = 0.038).

Proprioceptive drift. This figure shows the mean and standard errors of the proprioceptive drift measure, for each age group, fake hand size, and condition.

In this study we set out to examine whether children, young adolescents, and adults would embody hands of different sizes in the rubber hand illusion. All groups showed signatures of embodiment for all hand sizes, ranging from those which were 60% of their own hand size to those which were 140%. First, there were high ownership ratings and drift for the wide range of different fake hand sizes presented in the experiment, as well as effects of visuotactile synchrony on these measures, indicating that participants identified and localized these hands as their own. Second, both affordance judgments and ratings of own-hand size were modulated in a meaningful way by the size of the fake hand, indicating that embodiment of the fake hand changed the participant’s perception of their own hand. Together these indicate that hand size does not act as a high-level constraint on body representation but rather that there is significant plasticity in own-hand-size representation across ages.

Looking more specifically at ownership and drift, we found crucially that these were modulated very little by the size of the presented fake hands, with no evidence for any fine-grained tuning of ownership based on hand size. Rather, participants embodied hands of all sizes. More specifically, comparing ownership over hands that were smaller than one’s own with hands that were own-size or larger revealed little evidence to support the hypothesis that hand growth is easier to accept than shrinkage. This may be more specific to the scaling of tactile distance on the body 22 , 23 , rather than a general principle governing all aspects of embodiment including body ownership or touch referral.

Alongside changes to ownership following the illusion, we found changes to perceived hand size. In the action-oriented affordance measure participants judged their own hands as smaller after viewing a small fake hand, and larger after viewing a large fake hand, in agreement with 12 . Likewise on the questionnaire our participants reported that that their own hand felt smaller after viewing a small fake hand. This demonstrates substantial plasticity in own-body representation, such that incoming visual information can modulate long-term body representations. This complements findings from 24 , which used a visual matching task. Future work should determine how such different tasks may relate to one another as we seek to understand the interplay between hand ownership and perceived hand size.

Perceived hand size also changed with age. Children underestimated their own hand size significantly on the affordance task. This is consistent with 4 , who showed the same in a task where participants were asked to choose a viewed 3D hand model that matched theirs, and 25 , where underestimation was also found at 4–6 years using 2D images. However, the literature disagrees on the shape of developmental change. While Cardinali et al. show increasing underestimation between ages 6 and 10 years, Giurgola et al . show a similar underestimation in children and adults. The present study shows a third pattern, namely high underestimation in children and more veridical perception in adults. This issue should clearly be investigated in future studies.

Likewise, the propensity to feel that one’s hand had either shrunk or enlarged following the illusion was higher in younger age groups. Drawing together the affordance and questionnaire results on perceived hand size and age, it is possible that children’s inaccuracy and/or uncertainty regarding own-hand size, as revealed by the main effect of age on the affordance task, leaves them more susceptible to feeling their hand to be smaller following the illusion. In this way children’s inaccurate or unstable body representations may facilitate plasticity in own-body representation, such that hands of different sizes can be embodied.

Finally we note that the feeling of the hand being smaller in the extra-small condition was most pronounced for adolescents in the synchronous condition. Participants at this age may be particularly sensitive to the interplay between pre-existing constraints and incoming multisensory information, with visuotactile synchrony being used to strengthen the way in which pre-existing constraints shape the perception of hand size. While there has been relatively little work on bodily illusions in adolescence, the present results suggest that it might be an interesting age at which to examine body representation further.

Alongside these findings on hand size, we note several other important findings in the data. First, as predicted, drift in perceived hand location was larger at younger ages, we presume because the sight of the hand (irrespective of stroking) elicits a higher visual capture in young children 5 , 9 . In the present study, drift was also higher in adolescents than in adults. Some salient procedural differences between this study and the previous work on age-related changes in drift 6 include more realistically-coloured hands, and smaller brushstrokes (see below). It is for future studies to determine the effect these may have on overall drift levels.

The second result we found unrelated to hand size was that, as predicted, there were consistent effects of visuotactile synchrony across ownership, touch referral and drift measures. The present study complements existing literature on the importance of touch for children as well as adults 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 30 , 31 , and adds to the growing movement to incorporate haptics as an essential element of virtually-controllable avatars. However, these effects of visuotactile synchrony were not consistent with age: in fact for touch referral and ownership, the role of synchrony grew with age. Specifically, responses decreased in the asynchronous condition. This contrasts with previous studies of the rubber hand illusion which revealed adult-like differences between synchronous and asynchronous conditions from 4 years 6 , 8 . Because the present study used identical questions and prompts to these previous studies, and because children of this age give very low ratings to control questions 7 , 32 , we argue strongly against explaining this result simply as a tendency for children of this age to avoid saying ‘no’.

Rather, we note that the present finding of a growing sensitivity to multisensory (a)synchrony with age is very similar to a study of the visuotactile full-body illusion in children 33 . Like this study, that one used strokes of short duration and short distance (‘dabs’), rather than the longer strokes in 5 , 6 . We suggest that the ‘dabs’ contain less multisensory information than the strokes, and that younger children are therefore less confident in using them to establish a sense of bodily self—and in particular, less confident in using them to reject a possible self in the asynchronous condition (by default, we may tend to embody a viewed body part 34 ). While the visuotactile temporal binding window is larger at this age 35 , the gaps of ~ 1 s between our viewed and felt brush strokes and additional spatial asynchrony would have made these sensory discriminations relatively easy. However, this information may not yet be fed forward into the systems which establish a feeling of ownership over the body part. Examining directly the effects of different levels of visuotactile asynchrony would help illuminate this issue. In the interim, we conclude that children may use multisensory information differently to adults in establishing ownership over a body part, that the precise nature of this multisensory information may be important, and that these differences may persist into early adolescence.

The study has limitations which must be borne in mind when interpreting the results. In terms of the physical setup, it is possible that some limits to hand size would be found with a larger ranges of fake hand sizes—in extending a virtual arm, limits were found at 3–4 times its natural length 36 . Since they were cast from real hands, the fake sizes we used somewhat confounded hand age with hand size (the smallest hands in particular had notably chubbier fingers). We used only static hands—investigating moving bodies would provide a fuller picture of the representation of own-body size. In terms of measures, interpreting the main effects of age we found would have benefitted from the inclusion of control questions 19 , although we were able to draw on previous work to offset this issue. Likewise, we did not include the tactile distance perception measures that have been used in other studies 21 , 22 , nor ask participants to visually estimate their hand size 4 , 24 , 25 . It would have been useful to see how these related to the measures we took. A fuller picture would have been provided by testing whether illusory hand size scaled the perception of the surrounding visual environment 37 , 38 . Finally, we cannot assume that these results would necessarily translate to other body areas such as feet 39 , 40 ; to whole-body illusions 41 ; or to other sensory versions of the illusion 10 .

In conclusion, we found that participants were able to embody hands of a range of sizes, both smaller and larger than their own. This illusion also influenced the way in which hand size was experienced, with a small fake hand resulting in one’s own hand feeling smaller than usual and a large fake hand resulting in one’s own hand feeling larger. Both results suggest significant plasticity in the representation of one’s own hand size, across ages. Further, this plasticity was higher in children and adolescents, who had a greater tendency to rate their hand as having changed size. Early adolescents were more sensitive to the interplay of synchrony and size than other groups. We also found that participants all underestimated their own hand size, but that these distortions reduced with age. As well as these findings on size, we found that in this paradigm the effects of visuotactile synchrony grew with age. Children therefore use multisensory information differently to adults in establishing ownership over a body part, supporting recent theories 42 that own-body representation develops over a prolonged developmental period, as a result of significant multisensory experience.

Data availability

Data are available on OSF at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/X8K4G .

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Acknowledgements

This project received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC ES/P008798/1 to DC), the European Research Council (ERC 241242 to AJB), and the Swedish Research Council (VR-PG 2017-01504 to JMG). We thank the children and adults participating in this study, and the local primary schools for collaboration.

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D.C. developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the design. J.M.G. and L.A.B. collected the data. D.C. and J.M.G. analysed the data. D.C. drafted the manuscript.

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Cowie, D., Gottwald, J.M., Bird, LA. et al. The role of hand size in body representation: a developmental investigation. Sci Rep 12 , 19281 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23716-6

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The Representation of Body Size: Variations With Viewpoint and Sex

Associated data.

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Perceived body size is a fundamental construct that reflects our knowledge of self and is important for all aspects of perception, yet how we perceive our bodies and how the body is represented in the brain is not yet fully understood. In order to understand how the brain perceives and represents the body, we need an objective method that is not vulnerable to affective or cognitive influences. Here, we achieve this by assessing the accuracy of full-body size perception using a novel psychophysical method that taps into the implicit body representation for determining perceived size. Participants were tested with life-size images of their body as seen from different viewpoints with the expectation that greater distortions would occur for unfamiliar views. The Body Shape Questionnaire was also administered. Using a two-alternative forced choice design, participants were sequentially shown two life-size images of their whole body dressed in a standardized tight-fitting outfit seen from the front, side, or back. In one image, the aspect ratio (with the horizontal or vertical dimension fixed) was varied using an adaptive staircase, while the other was undistorted. Participants reported which image most closely matched their own body size. The staircase honed in on the distorted image that was equally likely as the undistorted photo to be judged as matching their perception of themselves. From this, the perceived size of their internal body representation could be calculated. Underestimation of body width was found when the body was viewed from the front or back in both sexes. However, females, but not males, overestimated their width when the body was viewed from the side. Height was perceived accurately in all views. These findings reveal distortions in perceived size for healthy populations and show that both viewpoint and sex matter for the implicit body representation. Though the back view of one’s body is rarely–if ever–seen, perceptual distortions were the same as for the front view. This provides insight into how the brain might construct its representation of three-dimensional body shape.

Introduction

The body is such an important part of our life – without it, we would not even exist. We use our body to present ourselves and to perceive and interact in the world. Knowledge about body posture, position, size, and structure are required to interpret and react to sensory information that is constantly being received and that may be coded relative to the body ( Kopinska and Harris, 2003 ; Harris et al., 2015 ). Processing sensations and generating actions requires the brain to accurately map and represent the body and the body-in-space. However, the first-person perspective of the body is highly restricted, and the third-person perspective afforded by a mirror provides only a limited view. We cannot directly see our entire body in the same way that we can view the entirety of our hands, arms, and legs. However, it is the full three-dimensional body that is represented in the brain ( Kammers et al., 2009 ; Longo and Haggard, 2012 ). How is the brain able to form such a representation of the body when it is not able to see it from multiple viewpoints? How accurate is its representation? The question then becomes focused on body perception when seen in unfamiliar views, such as from the side or back, to better understand how the implicit body representation is built up in the brain. We aim to answer these questions by assessing how accurate people are at judging their full body size when viewing their body from various viewpoints of which only the frontal view would be familiar. We used our novel psychophysical method that provides an implicit measure of the internal body representation ( D’Amour and Harris, 2017 ). Our method involves a participant choosing which of two images is most like their own body and adjusting one of the images accordingly. It ends when both images (reference and distorted) are equally likely to be chosen, neither of which actually matches their body representation. The representation is calculated as being between these values.

Body size perception has typically been looked at in those suffering from eating disorders as distortions and disturbances of perceived body size and shape most obviously occur in these populations ( Molinari, 1995 ; Probst et al., 1995 ; Gardner and Brown, 2014 ). Such studies have often tended to focus on measuring body image – how one feels about one’s body from a cognitive, emotional, and subjective view – rather than looking at how the brain internally maps and represents the body.

The objective of the current study was to examine perceived full body size accuracy to determine baseline values of how distorted the brain’s representation might be in a healthy, young populations of both males and females. The perceived width and height of the full body was measured as seen from three different body viewpoints in order to assess how the accuracy of perception changes when the image is presented in familiar and unfamiliar views. Previous studies have suggested both men and women tend to overestimate body width (e.g., Dolan et al., 1987 ; Stephen et al., 2018 ) and have emphasized the importance of baseline judgments in the healthy population ( Sadibolova et al., 2019 ). However, until the introduction of virtual avatars, most studies have used smaller-than-life-size photographs, which confound absolute judgments with aspect ratio judgments and perhaps explain why perceived height, which requires the use of full-size images, has been neglected. Estimates of people’s perception of their height have tended to come from actions, such as ducking under barrier ( Stefanucci and Geuss, 2012 ) which may not correspond to perceptual measures. In photographs height tends to be underestimated ( Kato and Higashiyama, 1998 ). We hypothesized that there would be significant deviations from accurate in our healthy population, with the body being perceived as bigger and also as shorter than its actual size, with greater distortions for body width.

There is a trend in this area of research to use images of the body as seen from the front – corresponding to the view most commonly seen in the mirror. However, being overweight is most obvious in the profile view: a view which can only be imagined without a complex arrangement of mirrors. There is thus a potential for a richer source of information from judgments of the body seen in side view ( Swami and Tovée, 2007 ; Cohen et al., 2015a , b ). We therefore predicted that there would be a difference between viewpoints. Familiar views (as seen in a mirror) were expected to be more accurate than unfamiliar views (side and back views that rely on a person’s imagination to visualize), so that the front view would be the most accurate and the back and side views would be the least accurate.

Sex and body satisfaction were also assessed to see how these factors might impact perceived body size. Men and women show different patterns of perceived body distortion with women being more prone to judge themselves as fatter ( Fallon and Rozin, 1985 ). This asymmetry may even have a basis in the differential roles of the cortical hemispheres in the representation of the body ( Mohr et al., 2007 ). Differences related to both sex and body satisfaction were therefore anticipated, with females and those with higher levels of body dissatisfaction showing greater perceptual distortions. Previous studies looking at body size perception have tended to concentrate on females (e.g., Slade and Russell, 1973 ; Gleghorn et al., 1987 ; Thompson and Spana, 1988 ; Molinari, 1995 ; Cornelissen et al., 2017 ; but see Dolan et al., 1987 ; Craig and Caterson, 1990 ). Thus, there is a relative lack of knowledge about how males represent their bodies and whether they might also show distortions in size perception. Here, we included both males and females. While previous research has shown that perceptual body distortions occur more in those dissatisfied with their bodies (e.g., Cash and Deagle, 1997 ; Probst et al., 1998 ; Stice and Shaw, 2002 ; Hrabosky et al., 2009 ; Mohr et al., 2011 ; Sand et al., 2011 ; Cornelissen et al., 2013 ; Mai et al., 2015 ), these studies have also focused on clinical eating disorder populations with high levels of body dissatisfaction and have often overlooked the healthy population. Based on these previous findings, we thought that there would be differences between low and high body dissatisfaction groups. We expected to find greater distortions for those in the high body dissatisfaction group, especially for the width conditions than for those in the low body dissatisfaction group. We also predicted that there would be strong positive correlations between body dissatisfaction and perceived size distortions.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Thirty-seven participants (18 females and 19 males) took part in the experiment (mean age = 21.24 years, SD = 7.61; mean BMI = 23.75, SD = 4.09; mean weight = 68.94 kg, SD = 14.39 kg; mean height = 169.93 cm, SD = 7.52 cm; mean Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) = 85.27, SD = 33.15). They were recruited from the York University Undergraduate Research Participant Pool and received course credit for taking part in the study. The protocol was approved by the York Ethics Board. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Materials/Stimuli

Body dissatisfaction.

The Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) ( Cooper et al., 1987 ) is a 34-item self-report questionnaire that was developed to assess concerns about body shape and experiences of feeling fat that participants may have experienced within the previous month. The test was administered before the experiment began to obtain a measure of body dissatisfaction. Higher scores indicate higher levels of body dissatisfaction. Participants were divided into high and low groups defined as whether their scores were above or below the overall mean score.

Photographs

Color photographs of each participant’s whole body in standardized poses were taken using a digital camera (Canon EOS 10D; flash on; no zoom function) from each of three different viewpoints with a camera distance of 270 cm. Participants were asked to stand in front of a white wall in three standardized poses. Standardized outfits were provided to obtain accurate outlines of their size and shape (see Figure 1 ). The images were then corrected for any lens distortions, cropped to include only the whole body, and formatted on a white background (Adobe Photoshop CC 2014). These images served as the undistorted reference images and were used for composing distorted images. Actual body height was measured from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head using a ruler taped up to a wall. The image was presented life-size projected (using a BenQ 1080p short throw projector) onto a screen at a viewing distance of 270 cm by digitally adjusting the magnification of the image until it physically matched the participant’s actual body size. The viewing distance was chosen as matching the camera’s focal length multiplied by the magnification ( Cooper et al., 2012 ), which minimizes distortions.

Experimental design and conditions. Sample images of the full body are shown for each viewpoint: front, side, and back. Width and length dimensions (indicated on the right of the figure) were distorted separately for each of the three viewpoints.

Distorting the Images

Images were presented and distorted using MATLAB (version 2011b) and Psychophysics Toolbox ( Brainard, 1997 ) running on a MacBook Pro. One dimension of the image (either width – see Figure 2A – or length – see Figure 2B ) was distorted (made either bigger or smaller) using a QUEST adaptive staircase psychometric procedure ( Watson and Pelli, 1983 ). The image was viewed in the center of a projector screen with the full body shown from one of three viewpoints: (1) front, (2) side, or (3) back. Perceived width and height were measured separately for each viewpoint so there was a total of six experimental conditions.

Examples of distorted images. Sample images of the distorted full body are shown for the (A) width and (B) height for each viewpoint - front, side, and back.

Participants sat in a chair at a viewing distance of 270 cm from the projector screen. Each trial consisted of two 1.5 s intervals – one interval containing the undistorted image and one interval containing the distorted image presented in a random order – separated by a blank white screen for 1.5 s. Participants identified which interval contained the image that most closely matched their perception of their own body and responded using a two-button computer mouse (left button for first interval and right button for second interval). A QUEST adaptive staircase procedure ( Watson and Pelli, 1983 ) was used with a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) design to vary the chosen dimension (length or width) of the distorted image ( D’Amour and Harris, 2017 ). Two interleaved QUEST staircases (25 trials per staircase) were used for each condition (50 trials total), with one starting with the manipulated dimension larger than natural and the other starting with that dimension smaller than natural. Each of the six conditions was run in a single block and took approximately 6 min to complete. Condition order was determined by a Latin square and was counterbalanced across participants.

Data Analysis

The QUEST program returned an estimate of the percentage distortion relative to the undistorted at which the participant reported that the distorted image was as like their perceived body size as the undistorted image. The QUEST algorithm assumes the observer’s psychometric function follows a Weibull distribution and adaptively determines the amount of distortion to be presented based on the participant’s response to the previous trials. As the experiment goes on, knowledge on the observer’s psychometric accumulates. Participant’s decisions were plotted against the distortion used for each trial and fitted with a logistic ( Equation 1 ) using the curve fitting toolbox in MATLAB.

where x 0 is the distorted value that was equally likely to be judged as matching the observer’s size as the undistorted photograph, and b is an estimate of the slope of the function. The size of the internal body representation was taken as the point half way between x 0 and the accurate size. We then subtracted 100% from this value to derive a difference-from-accurate score where positive numbers corresponded to an overestimate and negative numbers to an underestimate. The values so obtained for each participant for each condition were examined for outliers, defined as falling outside ±3 standard deviations from the mean. If a value fell outside this range (three participants—two females and one male), the complete dataset for that participant was removed.

One-sample t -tests were conducted for each condition to assess whether difference-from-accurate values significantly differed from zero (accurate). Mixed measures analyses of variances (ANOVAs) were used for statistical analyses, with alpha set at p < 0.05 and post hoc multiple comparisons were made using Bonferroni corrections. Pearson correlations were used to determine the relationship between body dissatisfaction and accuracy. Since we had predicted that there would be a specific direction for the correlations, one-tailed p ’s were used.

Full Body Size Accuracy

Table 1 summarizes the results of t -tests showing that the perceived width when seen from the front and side viewpoints were significantly different from accurate.

One-sample t -tests comparing mean accuracy errors (percentage distortions) to accurate (zero distortion).

SEM, standard error of the mean; CI, confidence interval .

Full Body Size Accuracy: Width Dimension

A three-way mixed ANOVA was conducted to test for within-subject effects of viewpoint (front, side, and back), and between-subject effects of sex (male and female) and BSQ group (low and high) for the width dimension ( Figure 3 ). A significant main effect of viewpoint, F (2, 60) = 3.38, p = 0.040, η p 2 = 0.101, and a significant interaction between viewpoint and sex, F (2, 60) = 3.77, p = 0.028, η p 2 = 0.112, were revealed. There was a difference in how width was perceived for the side view, with females showing greater overestimation from the side compared to both the front ( p = 0.017) and back ( p = 0.006) views with no significant difference between front and back views. Females’ side view estimates differed from male side view estimates ( p = 0.019) with males underestimating their width in side view and females overestimating it. No interaction effects were found between viewpoint and BSQ group, F (2, 60) = 0.90, p = 0.413, η p 2 = 0.029, or between viewpoint, sex, and BSQ group, F (2, 60) = 0.56, p = 0.576, η p 2 = 0.018. There were no significant findings in any of the between-subjects effects tests.

Mean differences from accurate for males ( left panel ) and females ( right panel ) when body width was distorted for each viewpoint. Positive and negative scores represent overestimation and underestimation, respectively. Error bars represent ±1 SEM.

Full Body Size Accuracy: Length (Height) Dimension

A second ANOVA was conducted using the same variables as above for the length (height) dimension ( Figure 4 ). No significant main effects or interactions were found for the within-subjects effects tests. This suggests that perceived body length (height) was not impacted by seeing the body in different views. However, there was a significant interaction between sex and BSQ group, F (1, 30) = 7.51, p = 0.010, η p 2 = 0.200. The high BSQ group differed ( p = 0.026) in the distortion direction for males (overestimate: M = 2.71, SE = 1.72) and females (underestimate: M = −2.59, SE = 1.46). There were also non-significant trends when the high and low BSQ groups were compared for each sex (males: p = 0.075; females: p = 0.051).

Mean differences from accurate for males ( left panel ) and females ( right panel ) when body length (height) was distorted for each viewpoint. Positive and negative scores represent overestimation and underestimation, respectively. Error bars represent ±1 SEM.

Correlations Between Perceived Full Body Size Accuracy and Body Shape Questionnaire Scores

Pearson correlations were run on the BSQ scores and differences-from-accurate to determine the relationship between body dissatisfaction and perceived size judgments. For the width dimension ( Figure 5 ), there was a strong and significant correlation for the front view, r (33) = 0.310, p = 0.037, and the side view, r (33) = 0.349, p = 0.022, but no relationship was found for the back view, r (33) = 0.099, p = 0.289. There were no significant correlations between perceived size accuracy and BSQ score for the length (height) dimension [front: r (33) = −0.193, p = 0.138; side: r (33) = −0.077, p = 0.333; back: r (33) = −0.100, p = 0.287].

Correlations between BSQ score and differences from accurate for perceived body width for the front (blue circles), side (purple squares), and back (dark blue triangles) viewpoints ( n = 34). The solid lines through the data represent linear regression fits.

Width and length were measured for the full body from the front, side, and back view in order to obtain baseline accuracy values in a healthy population of males and females. We found that the full body was perceived as thinner (underestimating width) in the front and back views but when the body was viewed from the side, only females overestimated their width. A parallel can be found in emerging sex differences in hand perception where overestimation of hand width is larger in females ( Coelho and Gonzalez, 2019 ; Longo, 2019 ). The height of the body was perceived as accurate. Our results reveal that viewpoint, sex, dimension (height/width), and body satisfaction matter for body representation. These findings provide insights into the mechanisms and factors that are involved in understanding how the body is processed, represented, and perceived.

Overall Accuracy

Our finding that, independent of sex or body dissatisfaction, full body size was perceived as different from actual size when viewed from the front and side view when measured using a rigorous psychophysical method, is a novel finding that adds to the literature about body size accuracy in healthy populations. These results provide baseline measurements of distortions in full body perception at the level of the brain’s implicit body representation. The underestimations in body width that we observed have also been shown in some previous studies (e.g., Gardner et al., 1989 ). The finding that height was perceived accurately in all cases was unexpected because we make continual changes and adjustments to alter the height of our bodies at least as perceived by others such as by wearing heeled shoes, donning hats, and often by styling our hair. A unique feature of this study was that we used life-size photographs which are necessary to measure perceived height. While previous studies have looked at height estimation, they have typically used methods that require participants to make judgments based on apertures or barriers (e.g., Stefanucci and Geuss, 2012 ; Wignall et al., 2017 ), but these indirect measures cannot be applied to understanding the accuracy of the internal representation of body height.

The Effect of Viewpoint

Front and back view.

Our predictions about the effects of viewpoint turned out to be the opposite of what we found. There was a general tendency to underestimate body width for males and females in accordance with Mazzurega et al.’s self-serving bias ( Mazzurega et al., 2018 ). Interestingly, the front view (the view that we often see in a mirror) and the back (a view that we never see) showed the same distortions. And instead of familiar views being the most accurate, the front view actually showed the greatest amount of distortions. This may be a further support for the special relationship that the front and back of the body have with each other. The representations of the front and back of the body may be mapped together by the brain ( Parsons and Shimojo, 1987 ; D’Amour and Harris, 2014 ; Harris et al., 2015 ; Hoover and Harris, 2015 ; Tamè et al., 2016 ). Thus, any distortion of one would be reflected in a comparable distortion of the other (see Figure 3 ).

Females perceived themselves to be wider than actual size only in the side view reminiscent of the female-only “fatter bias” of Mohr et al. (2007) . There are several possible reasons for this. The side view is rarely if ever seen and therefore is most demanding on the viewer’s ability to visualize this view using only their internal representation. It may therefore be the best view with which to measure the size of this representation ( Cohen et al., 2015a ) and the one most able to reveal true distortions. We confirmed that, in this view, women are more likely than men to see themselves as fatter ( Fallon and Rozin, 1985 ), but why might this be the case? Could this be due to the structure and functionality of a woman’s body? We did not ask whether any of our participants had been through pregnancy, and their youthfulness suggests that it would have been rare, but the potential for pregnancy involves an explicit expectation of flexibility in this front/back dimension ( Franchak and Adolph, 2014 ). We speculate that this flexibility and the expectation of future expansion in this dimension, not expected by men, may underlie this sex difference. Another possible explanation is that females may have acquired a general tendency to see themselves as fatter than they really are – an illusion encouraged by any amount of advertising campaigns and the media ( Thompson and Mikellidou, 2011 ; Docteur et al., 2012 ; Shin and Baytar, 2013 ; Gledhill et al., 2019 ). Hashimoto and Iriki (2013) found that slightly slimmer body images were most desirable as own-body images and that this tendency is most pronounced in women ( Cazzato et al., 2012 ).

Another study ( Cornelissen et al., 2018 ) aimed to determine which orientation was best for body size estimation tasks responding to the lack of research on how different viewpoints affect accuracy in body mass judgments. Since the majority of research has only presented the body from the front view, it is unclear whether this is the optimal viewpoint or if important visual cues that people use for size judgments are being obscured, such as stomach depth ( Tovée et al., 1999 ; Smith et al., 2007 ; Rilling et al., 2009 ) and thickness of the thighs and buttocks ( Cornelissen et al., 2009 , 2016 ; Cohen et al., 2015a , b ). While their study used computer-generated generic images and did not ask for own-body size judgments, they found a loss in precision for front view stimuli compared to both three-quarter and side views ( Cornelissen et al., 2018 ) which supports our current findings.

Sex and Body Satisfaction Scores

We have shown that distortions exist in both sexes for both low and high body dissatisfaction groups. Although there was surprisingly no effect of BSQ group on perceived width, there was a difference for perceived height between the males and females that were more dissatisfied with their bodies. On average across all three viewpoints, males in the high BSQ group perceived an increase in height, whereas females perceived a decrease. This finding could be due to attitudinal and societal factors that are experienced by each sex. When the relationship between BSQ score and perceived size accuracy was examined, it was revealed that higher body dissatisfaction showed greater distortions in perceived width for the front and side views. This is in agreement with Mazzurega et al. (2018) who related such findings to body attractiveness and what they called the self-serving bias. This bias is weaker in people who are less satisfied with their body and may result in greater distortions. It is difficult to compare our findings with previous studies since we used a population of healthy males and females and therefore had a much smaller range of BSQ scores than would be seen in females with eating disorders. Another potential limitation is that our sample size was quite small for conducting correlations and that we had an unequal amount of people in the low and high BSQ groups.

Our results are important because they assess the internal representation of body dimensions independent of distortions of the body image. To extend our study and further the research done to gain knowledge about how the brain represents the body, future studies using 3D full body images/avatars should be done with our method to obtain more details about the brain’s modeling and mapping of body size, shape, and structure. Other potential research that could be beneficial for comparing and contrasting with our findings (and all previous literature) would be to use our method in different experimental designs, such as testing the effects of image size, distorting both dimensions at once, distorting only particular parts of the full body, or testing a greater range of viewpoints. Findings from such lines of research could be used to develop programs to retune body representations not only in clinical populations but also for athletes and dancers where accurate body representation is particularly critical.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the York Ethics Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

Author Contributions

SD’A conceived the study and designed the experimental methodology. SD’A and LH devised and created the experimental methods, stimuli, and programming. SD’A performed the experiment and collected the data. SD’A analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. Both authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) grant #46271-2015 to LH. SD’A was supported by a PGS-D3 NSERC Graduate Scholarship and an NSERC CREATE Grant.

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