Abstract
SummaryCyber space enables us to “share” bodies whose movements are a consequence of movements by several individuals. But whether and how our motor behavior is affected during body sharing remains unclear. Here we examined this issue in arm reaching performed by a shared avatar, whose movement was generated by averaging the movements of two participants. We observed that participants exhibited improved reaction times with a shared avatar than alone. Moreover, the reach trajectory of the shared avatar was straighter than that of either participant and correlated with their subjective embodiment of the avatar. Finally, the jerk of the avatar's hand was less than either participant's own hand, both when they reached alone and in the shared body. Movement straightness and hand jerk are well known characteristics of human reach behavior, and our results suggest that during body sharing, humans prioritize these movement characteristics of the shared body over their own.
Highlights
The use of the cyber space has seen a substantial expansion through the COVID-19 crisis
Whether and how our motor behavior is affected during body sharing remains unclear
We examined this issue in arm reaching performed by a shared avatar, whose movement was generated by averaging the movements of two participants
Summary
The use of the cyber space has seen a substantial expansion through the COVID-19 crisis. The cyber space enables us to work together at distant places and can even enable us to interact with remote environments and individuals by ‘‘embodying’’ virtual avatars, as well as real avatars, like robots Such interactions using avatars is seen as a major future mode of communication between people. Ownership can be induced when different body parts are re-associated (Kondo et al, 2020) or even when the body is partially invisible (Kondo et al, 2018) While these illusory bodies’ appearances were different from the participants’ own body, only few rare studies (like Burin et al, 2019; Kokkinara et al, 2016) have investigated the scenario where the movements of the illusory body did not correspond to the movement of the actual body. In each of these studies participants perceived sole ownership of the body
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