The monologue of the double: Allocentric reduplication of the own voice alters bodily self-perception

Abstract

During autoscopic phenomena, people perceive a double of themselves in extrapersonal space. Such clinical allocentric self-experiences sometimes co-occur with auditory hallucinations, yet experimental setups to induce similar illusions in healthy participants have generally neglected acoustic cues. We investigated whether feeling the presence of an auditory double could be provoked experimentally by recording healthy participants' own versus another person's voice and movements using binaural headphones from an egocentric (the participants' own) and an allocentric (a dummy head located elsewhere) perspective. When hearing themselves allocentrically, participants reported feeling a self-identified presence extracorporeally, an arguably distinct quality of autoscopy. Our results suggest that participants without hallucinatory experiences localized their own voice closer to themselves compared to that of another person. Explorative findings suggest that distinct patterns for hallucinators should be further investigated. This study suggests a successful induction of the feeling of an acoustic doppelganger, bridging clinical phenomena and experimental work.