Stepping over and ducking under

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to learn if self-avatars influence people's perception and action in virtual environments. People viewed two situations in a virtual environment through a head-mounted display and were asked to decide how they would act. In one situation their task was to imagine walking across a room which was divided by a horizontal bar. The bar's height was varied and the task was for people to say whether they would need to step over the bar or duck under it. In the other situation the task was to imagine walking through a doorway. The doorway's height was varied and the task was for people to say whether they could walk straight through the doorway or would need to duck to pass through. One-half the participants viewed the situations with a self-avatar and the others viewed it without an avatar. The height of the avatar was varied, so that it either equaled the participant's height or it was 15% taller. The results showed statistically significant effects of the avatar in the horizontal bar situation: their step-over or duck-under decision points were about 12% higher when the self-avatar was rendered taller. In the doorway situation the effect of the avatar was statistically non-significant. The step-over step-under task is a promising method to study perception and action in virtual environments.