In five experiments, we investigated the effects of visual exposure to a real hand, a rubber hand, or a wooden block on reaching movements made with the unseen left hand behind a parasagittal mirror. Participants reached from one of four starting positions, corresponding to four levels of conflict between the proprioceptively and visually specified positions of the reaching hand. Reaching movements were affected most by exposure to the real hand, intermediately by the rubber hand, and least of all by the wooden block. When the posture and/or movement of the visible hand was incompatible with that of the reaching hand, the effect on reaching was reduced. A "rubber hand illusion" questionnaire revealed that illusions of ownership of the rubber hand were not strongly correlated with reaching performance. This research suggests that proprioception is recalibrated following visual exposure to prosthetic hands and that this recalibration is independent of the rubber hand illusion.

Recent models of multisensory integration predict differential weighting of information from different sensory modalities in different spatial directions. This direction-dependent weighting account suggests a heavier weighting for vision in the azimuthal (left–right) direction and a heavier weighting for proprioception in the radial (near–far) direction. Visually induced reaching errors, as demonstrated in previous ‘mirror illusion’ reaching experiments, should therefore be greater under visual-proprioceptive conflict in the azimuthal direction than in the radial direction. We report two experiments designed to investigate the influence of direction-dependent weighting on the visual bias of reaching movements under the influence of a mirror-illusion. In Experiment 1, participants made reaches straight forward, and showed terminal reaching errors that were biased by vision in both directions, but this bias was significantly greater in the azimuthal as compared to the radial direction. In Experiment 2, participants made reaches from right to left, and showed a significant bias only in the azimuthal direction. These results support the direction-dependent weighting of visual and proprioceptive information, with vision relatively more dominant in the azimuthal direction, and proprioception relatively stronger in the radial direction.