When the body tricks memory: movement, action and touch as determinants of memory illusions (BODYCEIVE) - Finanziamento dell’Unione Europea – NextGenerationEU – missione 4, componente 2, investimento 1.1.

The focus of the proposal is to study memory illusions deriving from sensorimotor simulation and affective touch, assess the role of the cerebellum in driving the phenomenon, and examine implications for eyewitness testimony. This highly relevant but largely unexplored area of investigation is very new, even though it stems from the established idea that cognition is embodied and that prediction and simulation are basic embodied functions of the cognitive system. In this theoretical framework, the body is the medium in which and through which sensorimotor modalities simulate the somatosensory components of perceived and remembered events. It thus predicts that perception and memory can be manipulated through body manipulation. While so far studies have mainly focussed on the positive effects of embodied phenomena on memory, here we will examine a specific type of cognitive distortion caused by body manipulation, memory illusions. Their existence can be predicted on the basis of previous work on motor perception, the role of prior belief in perception and memory, and the predictive nature of memory. Memory illusions for actions and affective touch have been severely under-researched, despite their theoretical interest and crucial applied implications, as in eyewitness testimony. In witness reports the gist of the event/memory is often an action and/or a touch. Based on such reports, judges or juries decide on agents’ responsibility and deserved punishment. The lack of research on the distortions in perception and memory for action and affective touch is a major gap in the investigation that this proposal seeks to address. The proposal is highly original in two respects. First, it nicely integrates different areas of investigation (memory, sensorimotor simulation, affective touch, cerebellum, all areas falling within the competence of the three research units). Second, it shifts the focus from memory facilitation to systematic/predictable memory errors resulting from the involvement of movement perception and touch. Despite existing research in each area, no attempt has yet been made to investigate their possible integration in producing memory illusions. What we propose is almost unexplored and therefore truly original.