Agency

Background and aims

Redirection in virtual environments is an increasingly important tool for many research fields such as mechanical engineering, computer sciences or neuroscience. As virtual worlds usually do not match the real ones, they induce situations of multisensory conflicts, which might reduce the feeling of being immersed and thus the utility of VR. Knowing these thresholds and overcoming them is thus crucial for various VR applications. Here we will focus on walking in a virtual room that is larger than the real one. The participant thus has to be redirected without losing the sense of immersion. Current redirection methods only take into account the geometries of the real room and the virtual world, as well as the user’s current state. Yet, as we will argue below, we believe that redirection can significantly be improved if also neuropsychological aspects (both knowledge from human learning and memory research as well as from the growing field investigating how the brain deals with conflicting multisensory information) are taken into account, plausibly allowing a more precise prediction of the user’s future walking trajectory. Neuropsychological research on the other hand could strongly benefit from such cutting-edge virtual environments, since they allow conducting basic research experiments that were barely possible so far.

Methods

This interdisciplinary project thus combines expertise in virtual reality and neuropsychology in three different experimental streams (work packages). We will first (3.3.1) identify the effect of a high-immersive VR system on the redirection threshold as a basic measure for the subsequent experimental streams. In a second experimental stream (3.3.2) we will use the same virtual reality set-up in order to test if knowledge from neuropsychology on human learning and memory can be used to to predict normal and redirected human walking in virtual reality with the example of spontaneous alternation behavior in virtual t-maze. In a third experimental stream (3.3.3) we will finally test how redirection links to the feeling of agency and how it can thus inform about multisensory integration in virtual worlds and its influence on the participants experience of the self and the body.

Rationale and significance

Together the results of the proposed experimental series will allow to optimize currently used redirection algorithms by respecting the underlying neuropsychological constraints. At the same time, the first-time ever use of virtual environments for the study of what has been labeled “perhaps the most reliable phenomenon in all psychological research” [Dember & Richman 1989], spontaneous alternation behavior, is expected to significantly enhance our understanding of serial responding and “spontaneity”. The planned experiments will contribute to novel insights into cognitive processes guiding an apparently simple motor act, i.e. human walking,- from memory to bodily self-awareness.