Honours Student
Department of Psychology and Counselling
School of Psychology and Public Health
La Trobe University

I am completing my Honours in psychology under the supervision of Dr Philippe Chouinard and Dr Rick Skarbez. I am interested in virtual reality as a tool for psychological research and clinical practice, particularly to explore concepts of the self and mind. Can we have a perception of self outside the physical boundaries of our body? Can we experience the body of a virtual avatar as our own?  Recent research shows that yes we can! Although these illusions are driven largely by multi-sensory integration, we aim to question whether cognitive processing can override the senses under certain conditions.

My Honours project will explore the role of cognition in a virtual body transfer illusion. Our goal is to investigate how the presence of a threat influences levels of virtual body ownership, by using objective and subjective measures of embodiment.