Virtual Avatar Research Articles

Self-organized Learning from Synthetic and Real-World Data for a Humanoid Exercise Robot.

We propose a neural learning approach for a humanoid exercise robot that can automatically analyze and correct physical exercises. Such an exercise robot should be able to train many different human partners over time and thus requires the ability for lifelong learning. To this end, we develop a modified Grow-When-Required (GWR) network with recurrent connections, episodic memory and a novel subnode mechanism for learning spatiotemporal relationships of body movements and poses. Once an exercise is successfully demonstrated, the information of pose and movement per frame is stored in the Subnode-GWR network. For every frame, the current pose and motion pair is compared against a predicted output of the GWR, allowing for feedback not only on the pose but also on the velocity of the motion. Since both the pose and motion depend on a user’s body morphology, the exercise demonstration by one individual cannot easily be used as a reference for further users. We allow the GWR to grow online with each further demonstration. The subnode mechanism ensures that exercise information for individual humans is stored and retrieved correctly and is not forgotten over time. In the application scenario, a physical exercise is performed in the presence of an expert like a physiotherapist and then used as a reference for a humanoid robot like Pepper to give feedback on further executions of the same exercise. For evaluation, we developed a new synthetic exercise dataset with virtual avatars. We also test our method on real-world data recorded in an office scenario. Overall, we claim that our novel GWR-based architecture can use a learned exercise reference for different body variations through incremental online learning while preventing catastrophic forgetting, enabling an engaging long-term human-robot experience with a humanoid robot.

Feasibility of clinical and electrocardiographic follow-up of prinzmetal angina using the metaverse

Abstract Background The recent pandemic triggered an acceleration in adopting innovative technologies and telemedicine novelties. The metaverse, representing a merge of digital worlds using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), promises disruptive transformation in healthcare. The feasibility of combining the metaverse with cardiovascular telemedicine services empowering remote consultation as well as assisting heart disease prevention and diagnosis, has not been investigated yet in cardiology. Purpose We evaluated the feasibility of combined clinical and electrocardiographic follow-up inside the metaverse on top of standard of care for a patient who presented with prinzmetal angina. Methods A digital consultation room combining AR/VR was created in a metaverse platform (GDPR compliant, CE marked class I medical device). Patient and cardiologist were given a personal and secured login account. Interactions and connections were made via virtual avatars. Patient was instructed to ask for a consultation in case of any cardiac related symptom occurred. The patient was equipped with a previously validated portable hospital-grade 12-lead smartphone-based electrocardiograph device which was directly integrated to the metaverse platform. Results A 30 years old obese active smoker patient presented for recurrent episodes of typical cardiac chest pain at rest. ECG showed sinus rhythm, normal atrioventricular and intraventricular conduction and no repolarization abnormalities. Laboratory test were normal, echocardiography showed a normal biventricular function with no focal abnormalities or valvular disease. Coronary angiogram excluded the presence of coronary artery disease, and the most possible diagnostic scenario was prinzmetal angina from coronary artery spasm. The patient was therefore discharged under treatment with diltiazem 120 mg twice daily, a multiple lead smartphone ECG device as well as the access to metaverse via his avatar, since no ECG were available during the episodes. Ten days later, the patient experienced an episode of palpitation accompanied with general discomfort. He subsequently logged into the metaverse where the cardiologist was available. The anamnesis of the episode was collected as well as the auto-recorded ECG by the patient. Although the clinical and electrocardiographic data were reassuring, the physician proposed to seek for medical attention. Hospital work up was consistent with the diagnosis provided in the virtual consultation. Conclusions To our knowledge, we conducted the first medical act in cardiology inside the metaverse combining VR environment with existing cardiovascular technological innovations as support information to the standard of care. Exploiting the full potential of the metaverse could serve as an unparalleled leap in the way cardiovascular medicine is delivered and could introduce new dimensions to cardiology in terms of health education, disease prevention and diagnosis. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.

Avatar embodiment in VR: Are there individual susceptibilities to visuo-tactile or cardio-visual stimulations?

Virtual reality has obvious potential to help humans developing/recovering brain functions, which operates through modulation of multisensory inputs. Some interventions using VR rely on the need to embody a virtual avatar, which stimulates cognitive-motor adaptations. Recent research has shown that embodiment can be facilitated by synchronizing natural sensory inputs with their visual redundancy on the avatar, e.g., the user’s heartbeat flashing around its avatar (cardio-visual stimulation) or the user’s body being physically stroked while the avatar is touched in synchronized conditions (visuo-tactile stimulation). While different full-body illusions have proven obvious interest in health and disease, it is unknown to date whether individual susceptibilities to illusion are equivalent with respect to cardio-visual or visuo-tactile stimulations. In fact, a number of factors like interoception, vestibular processing, a pronounced visual dependence, a specific cognitive ability for mental rotations, or user traits and habits like empathy and video games practice may interfere with the multifaceted construct of bodily self-consciousness, the conscious experience of owning a body in space from which the world is perceived. Here, we evaluated a number of dispositions in twenty-nine young and healthy participants submitted alternatively to cardio-visual and visuo-tactile stimulations to induce full-body illusions. Three components of bodily self-consciousness consensually identified in recent research, namely self-location, perspective taking and self-identification were quantified by self-reported feeling (questionnaires), and specific VR tasks used before and after multisensory stimulations. VR tasks allowed measuring self-location in reference to a virtual ball rolling toward the participant, perspective taking through visuomotor response times when mentally rotating an avatar suddenly presented at different angles, and self-identification through heart rate dynamics in response to a threatening stimulus applied to the (embodied) avatar. Full-body illusion was evidenced by self-reported quotations of self-identification to the avatar reaching scores in agreement with the literature, lower reaction times when taking the perspective of the avatar and a marked drop in heart rate showing obvious freezing reaction changes when the user saw the avatar being pierced by a spear. Changes in bodily self-consciousness components are not significantly dependent on the type of multisensory stimulation (visuo-tactile or cardio-visual). A principal component analysis demonstrated the lack of covariation between those components, pointing to the relative independence of self-location, perspective taking and self-identification measurements. Moreover, none of these components showed significant covariations with any of the individual dispositions. These results support the hypothesis that cardio-visual and visuo-tactile stimulations affect the main components of bodily self-consciousness in an extent that, in average, is mostly independent of individual perceptive-cognitive profiles, at least in healthy young people. Although this is an important observation at group level, which indicates a similar probability of inducing embodiment with either cardio-visual or visuo-tactile stimulations in VR, these results do not discard the fact that some individuals might have higher susceptibility to specific sensory inputs, which would represent a target to adapt efficient VR stimulations.

Piloting of the virtual telecare technology ‘Addison Care’ to promote self-management in persons with chronic diseases in a community setting: protocol for a mixed-methods user experience, user engagement and usability pilot study

IntroductionChronic diseases in older adults are one of the major epidemiological challenges of current times and leading cause of disability, poor quality of life, high healthcare costs and death. Self-management...

Implicit and explicit learning of socio-emotional information in a dynamic interaction with a virtual avatar

Implicit learning (IL) deals with the non-conscious acquisition of structural regularities from the environment. IL is often deemed essential for acquiring regularities followed by social stimuli (e.g., other persons’ behavior), hence is hypothesized to play a role in typical social functioning. However, our understanding of how this process might operate in social contexts is limited for two main reasons. First, while IL is highly sensitive to the characteristics of the surface stimuli upon which it operates, most IL studies have used surface stimuli with limited social validity (e.g., letters, symbols, etc.). Second, while the social environment is dynamic (i.e., our behaviors and reactions influence those of our social partners and vice-versa), the bulk of IL research employed noninteractive paradigms. Using a novel task, we examine whether IL is involved in the acquisition of regularities from a dynamic interaction with a realistic real-life-like agent. Participants (N = 115) interacted with a cinematic avatar that displayed different facial expressions. Their task was to regulate the avatar’s expression to a specified level. Unbeknownst to them, an equation mediated the relationship between their responses and the avatar’s expressions. Learning occurred in the task, as participants gradually increased their ability to bring the avatar in the target state. Subjective measures of awareness revealed that participants acquired both implicit and explicit knowledge from the task. This is the first study to show that IL operates in interactive situations upon socially relevant surface stimuli, facilitating future investigations of the role that IL plays in (a)typical social functioning.

AR Drum Circle: Real-Time Collaborative Drumming in AR

AR Drum Circle, is an augmented reality (AR) platform we developed to facilitate a collaborative remote drumming experience. We explore the effects of virtual avatars that are rendered in a player’s view to provide the joy and sensation of co-present music creation. AR Drum Circle uses a head mounted AR display, providing players with visual effects to assist drummers in coordinating musical ideas while simultaneously using a latency-optimized remote collaboration service (JackTrip). AR Drum Circle helps overcome barriers in music collaboration introduced when using remote collaboration tools on their own, which typically do not support real-time video, lack spatial information, and volume control between players, all of which are important for in-person drum circles and music collaboration. This paper presents the results of several investigations: (1) analysis of an in-depth, free-form response survey of drumming communication provided by a small group of expert drummers, (2) observations and analysis of 20 videos of live drum circles, (3) a case study using the AR Drum Circle application in pairs of remotely located participants, and (4) a collaborative drumming case study using a popular networked conferencing application (Zoom). Findings suggest that substantial communicative information including facial expressions, hand-tracking, and eye-contact is lost when using AR alone. Findings also indicate that the AR Drum Circle application can make players less self-conscious and more willing to participate while playing drums improvisationally with others.

Alice in Wonderland: The effects of body size and movement on children’s size perception and body representation in virtual reality

Previous work shows that in adults, illusory embodiment of a virtual avatar can be induced using congruent visuomotor cues. Furthermore, embodying different-sized avatars influences adults’ perception of their environment’s size. This study (N = 92) investigated whether children are also susceptible to such embodiment and size illusions. Adults and 5-year-old children viewed a first-person perspective of different-sized avatars moving either congruently or incongruently with their own body. Participants rated their feelings of embodiment over the avatar and also estimated the sizes of their body and objects in the environment. Unlike adults, children embodied the avatar regardless of visuomotor congruency. Both adults and children freely embodied different-sized avatars, and this affected their size perception in the surrounding virtual environment; they felt that objects were larger in a small body and vice versa in a large body. In addition, children felt that their body had grown in the large body condition. These findings have important implications for both our theoretical understanding of own-body representation, and our knowledge of perception in virtual environments.

The Effect of Mental Health App Customization on Depressive Symptoms in College Students: Randomized Controlled Trial.

BackgroundMental health apps have shown promise in improving mental health symptoms, including depressive symptoms. However, limited research has been aimed at understanding how specific app features and designs can optimize the therapeutic benefits and adherence to such mental health apps.ObjectiveThe primary purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of avatar customization on depressive symptoms and adherence to use a novel cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)–based mental health app. The secondary aim is to examine whether specific app features, including journaling, mood tracking, and reminders, affect the usability of the mental health app.MethodsCollege students were recruited from a university study recruitment pool website and via flyer advertisements throughout campus. A total of 94 participants completed a randomized controlled trial in which they were randomized to either customization or no customization version of the app. Customization involved personalizing a virtual avatar and a travel vehicle to one’s own preferences and use of one’s name throughout the app. Participants completed a 14-day trial using a novel CBT-based mental health app called AirHeart. Self-report scores for depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress were measured at baseline and after the intervention. Postintervention survey measures also included usability and avatar identification questionnaires.ResultsOf the 94 enrolled participants, 83 (88%) completed the intervention and postintervention assessments. AirHeart app use significantly reduced symptoms of depression (P=.006) from baseline to the end of the 2-week intervention period for all participants, regardless of the customization condition. However, no differences in depressive symptoms (P=.17) or adherence (P=.80) were observed between the customization (39/83, 47%) and no customization (44/83, 53%) conditions. The frequency of journaling, usefulness of mood tracking, and helpfulness of reminders were not associated with changes in depressive symptoms or adherence (P>.05). Exploratory analyses showed that there were 3 moderate positive correlations between avatar identification and depressive symptoms (identification: r=−0.312, P=.02; connection: r=−0.305, P=.02; and lack of relatability: r=0.338, P=.01).ConclusionsThese results indicate that CBT mental health apps, such as AirHeart, have the potential to reduce depressive symptoms over a short intervention period. The randomized controlled trial results demonstrated that customization of app features, such as avatars, does not further reduce depressive symptoms over and above the CBT modules and standard app features, including journal, reminders, and mood tracking. However, further research elucidating the relationship between virtual avatar identification and mental health systems is needed as society becomes increasingly more digitized. These findings have potential implications for improving the optimization of mental health app designs.Trial RegistrationOpen Science Framework t28gm; https://osf.io/t28gm

Knowing the intention behind limb movements of a partner increases embodiment towards the limb of joint avatar

We explored a concept called “virtual co-embodiment”, which enables users to share their virtual avatars with others. Co-embodiment of avatars and robots can be applied for collaboratively performing complicated tasks, skill training, rehabilitation, and aiding disabled users. We conducted an experiment where two users could co-embody one “joint avatar” in first person view and control different arms to collaboratively perform three types of reaching tasks. We measured their senses of agency and ownership towards the two arms of the avatar and changes in skin conductance levels in response to visual stimuli threatening the two virtual arms. We found that sense of agency, ownership, and skin conductance were significantly higher towards the virtual arm with control compared to the arm controlled by the partner. Furthermore, the senses of agency and ownership towards the arm controlled by the partner were significantly higher when the participant dyads shared a common intention or when they were allowed to see their partner’s target, compared to when the partner’s target was invisible. These results show that while embodiment towards partner-controlled limbs is lower compared to limbs with control, visual information necessary for predicting the partner’s intentions can significantly enhance embodiment towards partner-controlled limbs during virtual co-embodiment.

The Effectiveness of Virtual Events During Covid-19 Pandemics

Events suffer from severe impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on mass gatherings. The industry shifts to digital environment to sustain. However, virtual events’ limitation is multi-dimensional interaction resulting in consumer experience and satisfaction. Therefore, the effectiveness of virtual events is questioned. Key themes of COVID-19 impacts on the event industry and virtual event environment are review. Then, a conceptual model on event experience is applied as the theoretical framework of this research. This research is guided by the constructivism approach. Using qualitative methods and a semi-structured questionnaire, six interviews were conducted to exploit narratives on virtual event interaction and attendee experience. Data are analyzed according to three key themes of pre-, during-, and post-event experience. The incompletion of five senses in virtual event design restrains interpersonal interaction which negatively affect attendee experience. Some practices are recommended to increase virtual event’s effectiveness, including virtual avatars, three-dimensional projection, and hybrid events. Experience on virtual events is negative due to low degree of interpersonal interaction. Various application of virtual reality technology is suggested to improve effectiveness. Despite some limitations, this research has expanded the literature of virtual events.

Shouldn't Our Virtual Avatars be Granted Human Rights Too?

Shouldn't Our Virtual Avatars be Granted Human Rights Too?

가상 아바타와의 전신 몸 소유감에서 시각-운동 및 시각-촉각 동기화에 관한 연구

Body ownership illusion (BOI), which means ‘the illusion that a non-bodily object feels like my body’, has been actively studied since the Rubber-hand Illusion showed that a person can feel a rubber hand like one’s own hand. It has been proven that BOI can be elicited for virtual bodies in virtual reality. Although many studies have been examined the effect of visuomotor (VM) and visuotactile (VT) stimuli, which are mainly used for the elicitation of BOI, there were very limited studies that delivered both stimuli to the whole body at the same time. In this paper, we investigated how each stimulus affects BOI when delivering VM and VT stimuli simultaneously to the virtual avatar, and examined user experience that appears as presence, emotion, and virtual motion sickness. The results showed that BOI was high when VM is synchronous, but there was no significant difference according to VT levels. In the case of presence, it was confirmed that VT affects only when VM is synchronous, and in the case of emotion, both VM and VT affect valence, and in the case of virtual motion sickness, a statistical difference is not found. These results suggest that overall synchrony of VM is important factor in BOI with virtual avatars, but that the matching VT affects subjective experience such as presence when VM is synchronous.

Discourse Behavior of Older Adults Interacting with a Dialogue Agent Competent in Multiple Topics

We present a conversational agent designed to provide realistic conversational practice to older adults at risk of isolation or social anxiety, and show the results of a content analysis on a corpus of data collected from experiments with elderly patients interacting with our system. The conversational agent, represented by a virtual avatar, is designed to hold multiple sessions of casual conversation with older adults. Throughout each interaction, the system analyzes the prosodic and nonverbal behavior of users and provides feedback to the user in the form of periodic comments and suggestions on how to improve. Our avatar is unique in its ability to hold natural dialogues on a wide range of everyday topics—27 topics in three groups, developed in collaboration with a team of gerontologists. The three groups vary in “degrees of intimacy,” and as such in degrees of cognitive difficulty for the user. After collecting data from nine participants who interacted with the avatar for seven to nine sessions over a period of 3 to 4 weeks, we present results concerning dialogue behavior and inferred sentiment of the users. Analysis of the dialogues reveals correlations such as greater elaborateness for more difficult topics, increasing elaborateness with successive sessions, stronger sentiments in topics concerned with life goals rather than routine activities, and stronger self-disclosure for more intimate topics. In addition to their intrinsic interest, these results also reflect positively on the sophistication and practical applicability of our dialogue system.

Insight into contact forces in crushable sand using experiments and predictive particle-scale modelling

In this paper, an attempt is made to predict the evolving statistics of inter-particle contact forces during comminution using grain-scale computational modelling. A validation is first carried out by creating a one-to-one virtual avatar of an Ottawa sand specimen from three-dimensional X-ray tomography with level sets and comparing the data from an oedometric test to the model's prediction. The predictive capabilities are confirmed by comparing the constitutive response, grain size distribution and changes in particle shapes in both the experiment and model. Once validated, the predicted contact forces and particle stresses are investigated. It is found that the largest particles experience the largest forces. Despite larger particles being weaker on average, many survive because they are on the stronger side of the particle strength distribution and also have a higher coordination number producing a more isotropic stress state in the particle. These highest forces are largely aligned with the specimen axis, demonstrating that larger particles provide the strength in the loading direction. Meanwhile forces in the radial direction are more broadly distributed, indicating that small particles play a significant part in providing radial stability.

The Avatar's Gist: How to Transfer Affective Components From Dynamic Walking to Static Body Postures.

Dynamic virtual representations of the human being can communicate a broad range of affective states through body movements, thus effectively studying emotion perception. However, the possibility of modeling static body postures preserving affective information is still fundamental in a broad spectrum of experimental settings exploring time-locked cognitive processes. We propose a novel automatic method for creating virtual affective body postures starting from kinematics data. Exploiting body features related to postural cues and movement velocity, we transferred the affective components from dynamic walking to static body postures of male and female virtual avatars. Results of two online experiments showed that participants coherently judged different valence and arousal levels in the avatar’s body posture, highlighting the reliability of the proposed methodology. In addition, esthetic and postural cues made women more emotionally expressive than men. Overall, we provided a valid methodology to create affective body postures of virtual avatars, which can be used within different virtual scenarios to understand better the way we perceive the affective state of others.

Using virtual reality to develop emotional intelligence

IntroductionThe development of emotional intelligence is an urgent issue of teaching people in our time. The use of a virtual reality (VR) systems for the development of emotional intelligence is a problem of modern pedagogy.ObjectivesThe research is aimed at studying interrelations of the level of development of emotional intelligence the manifestations of the ability to perceive and identify emotional expression demonstrated by a virtual avatar in VR CAVE system. The research is aimed at finding unusual ways to develop emotional intelligence.MethodsThe study involved 55 participants aged 18 to 25 years (average age-20.38 ± 0.28), 23 of whom were men and 22 were women. During the study we diagnosed the level of development of emotional intelligence (Sergienko, Vetrova, 2009) and spatial abilities (Rimfeld et al., 2017), type of attachment to the loved one (Sabelnikova, Kashirsky, 2015), and the negotiating style of personality (Soldatova, Gasimov, 2019). In the VR CAVE system, a situation was simulated in which the subject had to detect the avatar and determine the emotional-facial expression displayed by it.ResultsIt was shown that the level of respondent’s emotional intelligence development does not determine the success of identifying the avatar’s emotion in VR. The success of identifying emotions depends on the level spatial abilities development. Therefore, it is assumed that in the simulated situation, the avatar is perceived as a special spatial image, and not as a full-fledged partner for interpersonal communication.ConclusionsThus, the use of VR systems for training and development of emotional intelligence is not proven.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Follow Your Nose: Extended Arm Reach After Pinocchio Illusion in Virtual Reality

In this study, we recreate the Pinocchio Illusion—a bodily illusion whereby the perceived length of one’s nose is extended—in Virtual Reality. Participants (n = 38) self-administered tapping on the tip of the nose of a virtual avatar seen from the first-person perspective (using a hand-held controller) while the nose of the avatar slowly grew with each tap. The stimulating virtual arm and the virtual nose were linked such that while the nose grew the arm extended, and then also grew up to 50%. This produced an extension of the perceived reach of the stimulating arm, and an outward drift in the participants’ real arm. A positive correlation between the extent of the outward drift of the participants’ arm and the perceived reachability of distal objects was observed. These results were found both with synchronous tactile stimulation on the participants’ real nose, and without, but not for control conditions in which the visuomotor synchrony or body schema were violated. These findings open new avenues for hand grasp interactions with virtual objects out of arm’s-reach in immersive setups and are discussed in the context of theories of body ownership, body schema, and touch perception.

Bio-physiological-signals-based VR cybersickness detection

With the gradual maturity of virtual reality (VR) technology in recent years, VR industry is in a trend of rapid growth, providing new possibilities for content design. Although VR technology has been able to provide users with excellent immersive experience, side effects that affect the user experience still exist, especially the cybersickness. It would cause extreme physical discomfort to the users and the discontinuation of use. Many researchers have tried to find the inducement of cybersickness and to detect and limit the occurrence of this symptom, but most of the current detection and analysis methods rely on subjective questionnaires to collect users’ posterior states, such as dizziness, nausea, cold sweats, disorientation, eyestrain and so on. There is no mature real-time cybersickness detection system for VR developers to evaluate the susceptibility of their products to cybersickness so far, which has hindered the adoption of VR to some extent. The purpose of this study is to implement the real-time monitoring of cybersickness using physiological sensors to measure data and quantify the influence factors of cybersickness through deep learning model. Besides, we have developed a VR experimental platform and passive navigation task to induce user cybersickness. During the experiment, to train the LSTM Attention neural network model, we collected the user’s real-time physiological signals, including skin electrical activity (EDA) and electrocardiogram (ECG), as well as the position and bone rotation data of the users’ virtual avatar. The model can detect the level of users’ cybersickness in real-time during VR experience. And the model has been verified by the fivefold cross-validation that the average accuracy of 96.85% was achieved for classification of cybersickness level, showing great performance compared with other relevant studies. The results show the feasibility of accurate classification of cybersickness using the model we proposed. Also the model can provide reference for VR researchers and developers to improve the user experience.

Neuroendocrine Response and State Anxiety Due to Psychosocial Stress Decrease after a Training with Subject's Own (but Not Another) Virtual Body: An RCT Study.

Previous research involving healthy participants has reported that seeing a moving virtual body from the first person perspective induces the illusion of ownership and agency over that virtual body. When a person is sitting and the virtual body runs, it is possible to measure physiological, behavioral and cognitive reactions that are comparable to those that occur during actual movement. Capitalizing on this evidence, we hypothesized that virtual training could also induce neuroendocrine effects that prompt a decreased psychosocial stress response, as occurs after physical training. While sitting, 26 healthy young adults watched a virtual avatar running for 30 min from the first person perspective (experimental group), while another 26 participants watched the virtual body from the third person perspective (control group). We found a decreased salivary alpha-amylase concentration (a biomarker for the stress response) after the virtual training among the experimental group only, as well as a decreased subjective feeling of state anxiety (but no difference in heart rate). We argue that the virtual illusion of a moving body from the first person perspective can initiate a cascade of events, from the perception of the visual illusion to physiological activation that triggers other biological effects, such as the neuroendocrine stress response.

Virtual-self Identity Construal in Online Video Games: A Repertory Grid Study Protocol

The aim of this project is to study the role that online videogames play in the way people build their identities. More specifically, the project is intended to study how people use online videogames and virtual avatars to explore alternative identities. It is possible for people to manifest entirely different versions of themselves through their virtual characters. Sometimes, those alternative identities may be a projection of what players consider ideal versions of themselves. Several variables may strengthen or hinder this capacity to project the ideal self onto a customizable “virtual self”. Some of these factors are inherent to the individual, while others may be more related to the specific game they play. The repertory grid technique will be used to explore online videogame players’ construct systems and to understand their need to explore alternative identities through their videogame characters. Other instruments will also be administrated to measure the degree of immersion that game players experience, to determine which aspects of play are the most appealing to them, and to gather data on their degree of subjective psychological well-being, all in order to assess how these variables, in addition to the others extracted from the repertory grid, may affect this identity exploration.