Trick the Body Trick the Mind: Avatar representation affects the perception of available action possibilities in Virtual Reality
Tugce Akkoc, Emre Ugur, Inci Ayhan

TL;DR
This study demonstrates that avatar representation in VR significantly influences users' perception of action possibilities, affecting response times and action planning, with implications for designing more effective virtual environments.
Contribution
It reveals how different avatar hand models alter affordance perception and action planning in VR, highlighting the importance of avatar design in interactive system effectiveness.
Findings
Avatar manipulation changes affordance perception in VR.
Less than 5 minutes of adaptation significantly alters perception.
Hand model type influences action initiation and completion times.
Abstract
In immersive Virtual Reality (VR), your brain can trick you into believing that your virtual hands are your real hands. Manipulating the representation of the body, namely the avatar, is a potentially powerful tool for the design of innovative interactive systems in VR. In this study, we investigated interactive behavior in VR by using the methods of experimental psychology. Objects with handles are known to potentiate the afforded action. Participants tend to respond faster when the handle is on the same side as the responding hand in bi-manual speed response tasks. In the first experiment, we successfully replicated this affordance effect in a Virtual Reality (VR) setting. In the second experiment, we showed that the affordance effect was influenced by the avatar, which was manipulated by two different hand types: 1) hand models with full finger tracking that are able to grasp…
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Taxonomy
TopicsVirtual Reality Applications and Impacts · Action Observation and Synchronization · Motor Control and Adaptation
