Multisensory disintegration and the disappearing hand trick

Figure 1: Mean maximum single rise in skin conductance in response to threatening stimuli. Left panel: SH baseline condition in which the hand was always visible. Central panel: In the CH condition, a black cloth covered the right hand so that it could be touched, but not seen. Right panel: in the DH condition the hand was absent from both vision and touch using the disappearing hand trick (see Supplemental Information Experimental Procedures). Planned comparisons between the means of interest revealed that responses for CH Near (the location of the hand when hidden by a cloth) were significantly higher than for CH Far (empty space next to the Covered Hand), DH Near (the last seen location of the Disappeared Hand) and DH Far (the real location of the Disappeared Hand). CHn vs CHf: F[1,10] = 32.483, p = 0.0002; CHn vs DHn: F[1,10] = 19.7, p = 0.0013; CHn vs. DHf: F[1,10] = 15.494, p = 0028. SH = baseline, CHn = Covered Hand Near, CHf = Covered Hand Far, DHn = Disappeared Hand Near, DHf = Disappeared Hand Far. ‘Near’ refers to the location of the middle fingertip of the right hand in the CH condition and the last seen location in the DH condition. ‘Far’ refers to the middle fingertip of the real (unseen) hand in the DH condition and the equivalent area of empty space in the CH condition. Asterisks denote significant differences between means (* < 0.05; ** < 0.01; *** < 0.001). Multisensory disintegration and the disappearing hand trick