The Impact of Embodiment and Avatar Sizing on Personal Space in Immersive Virtual Environments

In this paper, we examine how embodiment and manipulation of a self-avatar's dimensions - specifically the arm length - affect users' judgments of the personal space around them in an immersive virtual environment. In the real world, personal space is the immediate space around the body in...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics. - 1996. - 28(2022), 5 vom: 15. Mai, Seite 2102-2113
1. Verfasser: Buck, Lauren E (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Chakraborty, Soumyajit, Bodenheimer, Bobby
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2022
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics
Schlagworte:Journal Article Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:In this paper, we examine how embodiment and manipulation of a self-avatar's dimensions - specifically the arm length - affect users' judgments of the personal space around them in an immersive virtual environment. In the real world, personal space is the immediate space around the body in which physical interactions are possible. Personal space is increasingly studied in virtual environments because of its importance to social interactions. Here, we specifically look at two components of personal space, interpersonal and peripersonal space, and how they are affected by embodiment and the sizing of a self-avatar. We manipulated embodiment, hypothesizing that higher levels of embodiment will result in larger measures of interpersonal space and smaller measures of peripersonal space. Likewise, we manipulated the arm length of a self-avatar, hypothesizing that while interpersonal space would change with changing arm length, peripersonal space would not. We found that the representation of both interpersonal and peripersonal space change when the user experiences differing levels of embodiment in accordance with our hypotheses, and that only interpersonal space was sensitive to changes in the dimensions of a self-avatar's arms. These findings provide increased understanding of the role of embodiment and self-avatars in the regulation of personal space, and provide foundations for improved design of social interaction in virtual environments
Beschreibung:Date Completed 13.04.2022
Date Revised 27.06.2022
published: Print-Electronic
Citation Status MEDLINE
ISSN:1941-0506
DOI:10.1109/TVCG.2022.3150483