Abstract
In virtual reality, users do not receive any visual information coming from their own body. Thus, avatars are often used, and they can be embodied which alters the body representation. We suggested that the perception of one’s own movements (i.e., kinaesthesia) can be altered as well. We investigated whether visual cues coming from an avatar can be used for kinaesthesia and to what extent such cues can deviate from natural ones. We used a paradigm in which the participant’s left forearm was moved passively, correlated with the movement of both forearms of the avatar. Such visuo-proprioceptive combination induces kinaesthetic illusions in the participant’s right forearm. The impact of the morphological similarity (semantic congruency) and of the visual perspective of the avatar (spatial congruency) was investigated. Results have indicated that avatar’s movements are processed as one’s own movements. Morphological similarity and first-person perspective were not necessary, but they reinforced the illusions. Thus, visual motion cues can strongly deviate from natural ones in morphology and perspective and still contribute to kinaesthesia.
Highlights
In virtual reality, users do not receive any visual information coming from their own body
A virtual environment is generated by a computer and displayed to the users through screens or Head Mounted Displays (HMD)
An avatar, like a rubber hand, is a fake body. Even if it is a humanoid avatar, it does not look like a real body and, except perhaps in some very recent video games, it cannot be confused with a real human body
Summary
A virtual environment is generated by a computer and displayed to the users through screens or Head Mounted Displays (HMD). Longo and colleagues used a principal component analysis to segregate ownership, agency and self-location during the Rubber Hand Illusion (Longo et al, 2008) This illusion occurs when a fake hand and the real hand of the participant are stroked synchronously while the latter is hidden from view. Most of head-mounted displays, used nowadays in virtual reality set-ups, can track in real-time users’ head movements Such feature enables the participants to explore the virtual environment by naturally moving their head, but it can be used to animate the avatar’s head in congruence with the users’ head, inducing a visuo-motor congruency when the users see their avatar in a mirror (e.g., Slater et al, 2010). In the literature, there are many examples of embodiment of non-humanoid objects ranging from a cat’s paw (Zhang et Hommel, 2016) to dots placed at the fingertips’ locations (Schwind et al, 2018), including a wooden block (Lin et Jörg, 2016) or even a 2D square (Ma et Hommel, 2015)
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