Fig. 1

Mixed-Reality Task Procedures. (A) In the ‘Long’ task, participants viewed their arm being brushed by themselves (self-touch) or by the researcher (other-touch) for 60s whilst the visual feed of the head-mounted display was delayed by either 0–1 s, plus the intrinsic delay of the system (Mean = 134.23ms, see supplementary materials). The order of the four different trial types were counterbalanced across participants. After each trial, participants completed a 9-item questionnaire rating their feelings of dis-ownership, derealization, de-afference, embodiment and pleasantness (see Table 4 for full questionnaire). (B) The ‘Threshold’ task involved 40 self-touch and 40 other-touch trials, the order of which was counterbalanced. Each trial lasted 9s and the delay ranged from 0-594ms. After each trial, participants judged the synchrony of the seen and felt touch and rated their felt embodiment and pleasantness on visual analogue scales. Self-reported embodiment decreased monotonically with increasing delay (N = 90), points indicate mean embodiment ratings, error bars depict standard error from the mean.