Dataset Information

Effects of prolonged exposure to feedback delay on the qualitative subjective experience of virtual reality.

ABSTRACT: When interacting with virtual environments, feedback delays between making a movement and seeing the visual consequences of that movement are detrimental for the subjective quality of the VR experience. Here we used standard measures of subjective experiences such as ownership, agency and presence to investigate whether prolonged exposure to the delay, and thus the possibility to adapt to it, leads to the recovery of the qualitative experience of VR. Participants performed a target-tracking task in a Virtual Reality environment. We measured the participants' tracking performance in terms of spatial and temporal errors with respect to the target in both No-Delay and Delay conditions. Additionally, participants rated their sense of "ownership" of holding a virtual tool, agency and presence on each trial using sliding scales. These single trial ratings were compared to the results of the more traditional questionnaires for ownership and agency and presence for both No-Delay and Delay conditions. We found that the participants' sliding scales ratings corresponded very well to the scores obtained from the traditional questionnaires. Moreover, not only did participants behaviourally adapt to the delay, their ratings of ownership and agency significantly improved with prolonged exposure to the delay. Together the results suggest a tight link between the ability to perform a behavioural task and the subjective ratings of ownership and agency in virtual reality.

SUBMITTER: van Dam LCJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6200207 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of prolonged exposure to feedback delay on the qualitative subjective experience of virtual reality.

van Dam Loes C J LCJ Stephens Joey R JR

PloS one 20181024 10

When interacting with virtual environments, feedback delays between making a movement and seeing the visual consequences of that movement are detrimental for the subjective quality of the VR experience. Here we used standard measures of subjective experiences such as ownership, agency and presence to investigate whether prolonged exposure to the delay, and thus the possibility to adapt to it, leads to the recovery of the qualitative experience of VR. Participants performed a target-tracking task ...[more]

PMID: 30356243

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Project description:Mortality is an obvious if uncomfortable part of the human condition, yet it is impossible to study its impact on anyone who experiences it. Reports of phenomena associated with death such as out-of-the-body (OBE) and near death experiences (NDE) can only be studied post-hoc, since it is impossible to design a scientific study where an experimental group experiences death (and returns) and a control group does not. Yet NDEs seem to have a profound influence on the subsequent lives of people and are therefore worthy of study. Terror Management Theory, which argues that death anxiety contributes to in-group solidarity and hostility to out-groups, relies on studies that manipulate opinions and cannot be based on experiential evidence. Here we introduce a potential methodology that uses immersive virtual reality (VR) for the study of mortality and NDEs. Participants are embodied in alternate bodies in a beautiful island along with two companions. They explore the island and carry out tasks together. The mechanism of embodiment produces strong illusions of ownership over their life-sized virtual bodies. Over time each participant witnesses the death of the two companions and then her own death-which includes the reported features of an NDE (OBE, life review, the tunnel leading to white light) followed by a period of observation of the continuing activities in the virtual world on an external screen. Fifteen female participants experienced 6 sessions in the island, each starting as a child and gradually maturing, and eventually ageing and dying. Sixteen control subjects formed a waiting group. We introduce this as a methodology for the study of these issues, and present promising results, suggesting that those who experienced the island report life attitude changes, becoming more concerned with others and more interested in global rather than material issues compared to the control group. The results are based on a small sample size, and should be considered as indicative of the possibilities of this new methodology as a way forward for future studies in this field.

Project description:BackgroundAltering the normal association between touch and its visual correlate can result in the illusory perception of a fake limb as part of our own body. Thus, when touch is seen to be applied to a rubber hand while felt synchronously on the corresponding hidden real hand, an illusion of ownership of the rubber hand usually occurs. The illusion has also been demonstrated using visuomotor correlation between the movements of the hidden real hand and the seen fake hand. This type of paradigm has been used with respect to the whole body generating out-of-the-body and body substitution illusions. However, such studies have only ever manipulated a single factor and although they used a form of virtual reality have not exploited the power of immersive virtual reality (IVR) to produce radical transformations in body ownership.Principal findingsHere we show that a first person perspective of a life-sized virtual human female body that appears to substitute the male subjects' own bodies was sufficient to generate a body transfer illusion. This was demonstrated subjectively by questionnaire and physiologically through heart-rate deceleration in response to a threat to the virtual body. This finding is in contrast to earlier experimental studies that assume visuotactile synchrony to be the critical contributory factor in ownership illusions. Our finding was possible because IVR allowed us to use a novel experimental design for this type of problem with three independent binary factors: (i) perspective position (first or third), (ii) synchronous or asynchronous mirror reflections and (iii) synchrony or asynchrony between felt and seen touch.ConclusionsThe results support the notion that bottom-up perceptual mechanisms can temporarily override top down knowledge resulting in a radical illusion of transfer of body ownership. The research also illustrates immersive virtual reality as a powerful tool in the study of body representation and experience, since it supports experimental manipulations that would otherwise be infeasible, with the technology being mature enough to represent human bodies and their motion.

Dataset Information

Effects of prolonged exposure to feedback delay on the qualitative subjective experience of virtual reality.

Publications

Effects of prolonged exposure to feedback delay on the qualitative subjective experience of virtual reality.

Similar Datasets

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