Embodiment in a virtual body that speaks produces agency over the speaking but does not necessarily influence subsequent real speaking

Previous results have shown that body ownership, induced through first-person perspective (1PP) over a virtual body (VB) that moves synchronously with real body movements, can lead to illusory agency over VB utterances even though the participant does not speak. It was also found that when participants later speak they follow the fundamental frequency (FF) of the voice of their VB, indicating a new motor plan for speaking. To eliminate the contribution of veridical agency over the VB movements, we conducted a study where we induced body ownership using visuotactile (VT) synchrony rather than visuomotor. Participants saw a life-sized VB from 1PP and reflected in a virtual mirror, that spoke with corresponding lip movements. Half of the 36 experimental participants experienced synchronous (Sync) passive VT on their hands and abdomen, and the other half asynchronous (Async). We found that both VT Sync and Async conditions resulted in a strong subjective illusion of body ownership and agency over the VB, but not, however, changes in voice FF in subsequent speaking. This shows that although illusory agency may be associated with body ownership, a change in motor plan is likely to be a generalisation from veridical agency over whole body movements

Virtual Embodiment of White People in a Black Virtual Body Leads to a Sustained Reduction in Their Implicit Racial Bias

Virtual reality can be used to visually substitute a person’s body by a life-sized virtual one. Such embodiment results in a perceptual illusion of body ownership over the virtual body (VB). Previous research has shown that the form of the VB can influence implicit attitudes. In particular, embodying White people in a Black virtual body is associated with an immediate decrease in their implicit racial bias against Black people. We tested whether the reduction in implicit bias lasts for at least 1 week and whether it is enhanced by multiple exposures. Two experiments were carried out with a total of 90 female participants where the virtual body was either Black or White. Participants were required to follow a virtual Tai Chi teacher who was either Asian or European Caucasian. Each participant had 1, 2, or 3 exposures separated by days. Implicit racial bias was measured 1 week before their first exposure and 1 week after their last. The results show that implicit bias decreased more for those with the Black virtual body than the White. There was also some evidence of a general decrease in bias independently of body type for which possible explanations are put forward

Embodiment in a Child-Like Talking Virtual Body Influences Object Size Perception, Self-Identification, and Subsequent Real Speaking

People’s mental representations of their own body are malleable and continuously updated through sensory cues. Altering one’s body-representation can lead to changes in object perception and implicit attitudes. Virtual reality has been used to embody adults in the body of a 4-year-old child or a scaled-down adult body. Child embodiment was found to cause an overestimation of object sizes, approximately double that during adult embodiment, and identification of the self with child-like attributes. Here we tested the contribution of auditory cues related to one’s own voice to these visually-driven effects. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, visual and auditory feedback on one’s own body were varied across conditions, which included embodiment in a child or scaled-down adult body, and real (undistorted) or child-like voice feedback. The results replicated, in an older population, previous findings regarding size estimations and implicit attitudes. Further, although auditory cues were not found to enhance these effects, we show that the strength of the embodiment illusion depends on the child-like voice feedback being congruent or incongruent with the age of the virtual body. Results also showed the positive emotional impact of the illusion of owning a child’s body, opening up possibilities for health applications

Author Correction: Embodiment in a Child-Like Talking Virtual Body Influences Object Size Perception, Self-Identification, and Subsequent Real Speaking

Correction to: Scientific Reports https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09497-3, published online 29 August 201

A mechanistic account of bodily resonance and implicit bias

Implicit social biases play a critical role in shaping our attitudes towards other people. Such biases are thought to arise, in part, from a comparison between features of one's own self-image and those of another agent, a process known as 'bodily resonance'. Recent data have demonstrated that implicit bias can be remarkably plastic, being modulated by brief immersive virtual reality experiences that place participants in a virtual body with features of an out-group member. Here, we provide a mechanistic account of bodily resonance and implicit bias in terms of a putative self-image network that encodes associations between different features of an agent. When subsequently perceiving another agent, the output of this self-image network is proportional to the overlap between their respective features, providing an index of bodily resonance. By combining the self-image network with a drift diffusion model of decision making, we simulate performance on the implicit association test (IAT) and show that the model captures the ubiquitous implicit bias towards in-group members. We subsequently demonstrate that this implicit bias can be modulated by a simulated illusory body ownership experience, consistent with empirical data; and that the magnitude and plasticity of implicit bias correlates with self-esteem. Hence, we provide a simple mechanistic account of bodily resonance and implicit bias which could contribute to the development of interventions for reducing the negative evaluation of social out-groups

Virtual money, practices and moral orders in Second Life

Virtual monies present a limit case in debates about money's moral and political entanglements between sociologists, anthropologists, and economists. Digitized virtual monies seem ephemeral, almost ideal typical examples of money as a pure medium of exchange. This paper begins with the premise that virtual monies are as value-laden and morally entangled as any other form of money. This assertion is demonstrated by exploring how one type of virtual money, the Linden dollar (L$), and some of its associated practices are bound up with research participants' moral categories and judgments in the virtual world of Second Life (SL). Participants' accounts of virtual money practices are linked to moral attributes, sometimes in stark ‘good’ or ‘bad’ dichotomies, but also in more nuanced terms. These framings reproduce classifications of people and practices along a continuum with virtuousness at one end and maliciousness or harm at the other, passing through various states of possible moral dubiousness. For respondents, these two judgments go together; people are what they do with money. As a result, respondents decide what ‘people like that’ deserve. Evaluating someone's money practices means assessing the person. Participants' accounts of Linden dollar practices overlap with explanations of what SL is and how residents should live there. In SL, money is a form of material culture through which appropriate ways of being in the world are debated and reproduced

The Rocketbox Library and the Utility of Freely Available Rigged Avatars

As part of the open sourcing of the Microsoft Rocketbox avatar library for research and academic purposes, here we discuss the importance of rigged avatars for the Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR, AR) research community. Avatars, virtual representations of humans, are widely used in VR applications. Furthermore many research areas ranging from crowd simulation to neuroscience, psychology, or sociology have used avatars to investigate new theories or to demonstrate how they influence human performance and interactions. We divide this paper in two main parts: the first one gives an overview of the different methods available to create and animate avatars. We cover the current main alternatives for face and body animation as well introduce upcoming capture methods. The second part presents the scientific evidence of the utility of using rigged avatars for embodiment but also for applications such as crowd simulation and entertainment. All in all this paper attempts to convey why rigged avatars will be key to the future of VR and its wide adoption

Movement of environmental threats modifies the relevance of the defensive eye-blink in a spatially-tuned manner.

Subcortical reflexive motor responses are under continuous cortical control to produce the most effective behaviour. For example, the excitability of brainstem circuitry subserving the defensive hand-blink reflex (HBR), a response elicited by intense somatosensory stimuli to the wrist, depends on a number of properties of the eliciting stimulus. These include face-hand proximity, which has allowed the description of an HBR response field around the face (commonly referred to as a defensive peripersonal space, DPPS), as well as stimulus movement and probability of stimulus occurrence. However, the effect of stimulus-independent movements of objects in the environment has not been explored. Here we used virtual reality to test whether and how the HBR-derived DPPS is affected by the presence and movement of threatening objects in the environment. In two experiments conducted on 40 healthy volunteers, we observed that threatening arrows flying towards the participant result in DPPS expansion, an effect directionally-tuned towards the source of the arrows. These results indicate that the excitability of brainstem circuitry subserving the HBR is continuously adjusted, taking into account the movement of environmental objects. Such adjustments fit in a framework where the relevance of defensive actions is continually evaluated, to maximise their survival value

Embodying compassion: A virtual reality paradigm for overcoming excessive self-criticism

Virtual reality has been successfully used to study and treat psychological disorders such as phobias and posttraumatic stress disorder but has rarely been applied to clinically-relevant emotions other than fear and anxiety. Self-criticism is a ubiquitous feature of psychopathology and can be treated by increasing levels of self-compassion. We exploited the known effects of identification with a virtual body to arrange for healthy female volunteers high in self-criticism to experience self-compassion from an embodied first-person perspective within immersive virtual reality. Whereas observation and practice of compassionate responses reduced self-criticism, the additional experience of embodiment also increased self-compassion and feelings of being safe. The results suggest potential new uses for immersive virtual reality in a range of clinical conditions.N/

The body fades away: investigating the effects of transparency of an embodied virtual body on pain threshold and body ownership

The ffeelffing off “ownershffip” over an external dummy/vffirtual body (or body part) has been proven to have both physffiologffical and behavffioural consequences. For ffinstance, the vffisffion off an “embodffied” dummy or vffirtual body can modulate paffin perceptffion. However, the ffimpact off partffial or total ffinvffisffibffilffity off the body on physffiology and behavffiour has been hardly explored sffince ffit presents obvffious dffifficultffies ffin the real world. In thffis study we explored how body transparency affects both body ownershffip and paffin threshold. By means off vffirtual realffity, we presented healthy partfficffipants wffith a vffirtual co-located body wffith ffour dffifferent levels off transparency, whffile partfficffipants were tested ffor paffin threshold by ffincreasffing ramps off heat stffimulatffion. We ffound that the strength off the body ownershffip ffillusffion decreases when the body gets more transparent. Nevertheless, ffin the condffitffions where the body was semffi-transparent, hffigher levels off ownershffip over a see-through body resulted ffin an ffincreased paffin sensffitffivffity. Vffirtual body ownershffip can be used ffor the development off paffin management ffinterventffions. However, we demonstrate that provffidffing ffinvffisffibffilffity off the body does not ffincrease paffin threshold. Thereffore, body transparency ffis not a good strategy to decrease paffin ffin clffinffical contexts, yet thffis remaffins to be tested