Abstract
Researchers investigating virtual/augmented reality have shown humans' marked adaptability, especially regarding our sense of body ownership; their cumulative findings have expanded the concept of what it means to have a body. Herein, we report the hand ownership illusion during “two views merged in.” In our experiment, participants were presented two first-person perspective views of their arm overlapped, one was the live feed from a camera and the other was a playback video of the same situation, slightly shifted toward one side. The relative visibility of these two views and synchrony of tactile stimulation were manipulated. Participants' level of embodiment was evaluated using a questionnaire and proprioceptive drift. The results show that the likelihood of embodying the virtual hand is affected by the relative visibility of the two views and synchrony of the tactile events. We observed especially strong hand ownership of the virtual hand in the context of high virtual hand visibility with synchronous tactile stimulation.
Highlights
Distinguishing between one’s own body and external objects is an essential ability in daily life, especially when that body is threatened by an external object
Consistent with previous rubber hand illusion (RHI) studies (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998; Tsakiris and Haggard, 2005; Haans et al, 2008; Ide, 2013; Bertamini and O’Sullivan, 2014; Samad et al, 2015, to name just a few), we evaluated the strength of ownership over the virtual hand using a questionnaire and by measuring proprioceptive drift
We evaluated proprioceptive drift, which has been used as the classic index of the RHI (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998; Tsakiris and Haggard, 2005)
Summary
Distinguishing between one’s own body and external objects is an essential ability in daily life, especially when that body is threatened by an external object. The ability to perceive one’s body is developed in a natural environment, experiments in artificial environments (e.g., virtual/augmented reality) have shown a strong potential for humans to adapt our sense of body ownership, despite the artificial context. The sense of body ownership can be perceived even using a mannequin smaller or larger than one’s own body size (van der Hoort et al, 2011). Kilteni et al reported that participants in an artificial environment can feel ownership of an arm twice or more their usual length (Kilteni et al, 2012). Compiling such evidence expands our concept of what it means to have a body, and aids designing future artificial environments. Since conception of artificial environments is unlimited, greater variation in situations should be investigated
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