Abstract/Summary

Ever since the different aspects of self were proposed by William James over a century ago, self-representation has remained a focus of empirical and theoretical interest. In this chapter, we focus on Jamesian ‘bodily self’, or physical self-representation. We describe a set of studies on the representation of self-face and self-voice, where participants were explicitly asked to label different morphed stimuli as ‘self’ or ‘other’. Across studies in two cultures, we note that the boundary for self-other judgement is significantly different between face and voice stimuli. Beyond testing the cultural generalisability of these results, we note the impact of autism-related symptomatic variation on self-face and self-voice processing. Here too, we see a culturally generalisable pattern that demonstrates a more distinct self-representation in individuals with high autistic traits, specifically for voice stimuli. The chapter concludes by proposing two competing theoretical models to explain these findings and pointing to future directions.