Adopting the Spatial Perspective of an Avatar

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jochen Müsseler
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 356807975

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

If an actor takes the perspective of an avatar (or robot), spatial dissociations can arise between the perspective of the actor and the perspective of the avatar. Well-known cognitive phenomena (such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility) are predicted to be influenced by the actor’s identification with the avatar. The present project aims at the conditions in which an actor adopts avatar’s perspective and asks to what extent the actor identifies with the avatar, integrates him into his/her body schema, or even becomes one with him. Thus, our goal was to gather further information about concepts like the minimal self, agency, embodiment and ownership. Based on our own data and on the reviewed literature on humanavatar interaction we concluded that when the user sets their own goals in a virtual environment, plans and executes an avatar’s actions, and compares the predicted with the actual motion outcomes of the avatar that this makes the user feel body ownership and agency over the avatar’s action.

Publications

• Action effect consistency and body ownership in the avatar-Simon task. PLOS ONE, 14(8), e0220817.
  Böffel, Christian & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• Perceived Ownership of Avatars Influences Visual Perspective Taking. Frontiers in Psychology, 9.
  Böffel, Christian & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• Reversed effect of spatial compatibility when taking avatar’s perspective. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(6), 1539-1549.
  Müsseler, Jochen; Ruhland, Lennart & Böffel, Christian
  
• Visual perspective taking for avatars in a Simon task. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 81(1), 158-172.
  Böffel, Christian & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• Human Cognition in Interaction With Robots: Taking the Robot’s Perspective Into Account. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 63(8), 1396-1407.
  Salm-Hoogstraeten, Sophia von & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• No evidence for automatic response activation with target onset in the avatar-compatibility task. Memory & Cognition, 48(7), 1249-1262.
  Böffel, C. & Müsseler, J.
  
• Seeing the world through the eyes of an avatar? Comparing perspective taking and referential coding.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 46(3), 264-273.
  von Salm-Hoogstraeten, Sophia; Bolzius, Katharina & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• Spatial–numerical associations in the presence of an avatar. Psychological Research, 85(7), 2588-2598.
  Böffel, C.; Herbst, C.; Lindemann, O. & Müsseler, J.
  
• Taking time to take perspective? Rapidly changing reference frames in the avatar-Simon task. Acta Psychologica, 204, 103005.
  Böffel, Christian & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• Object affordances from the perspective of an avatar. Consciousness and Cognition, 92, 103133.
  Arend, Matthias G. & Müsseler, Jochen
  
• Perspective Taking and Avatar-Self Merging. Frontiers in Psychology, 13.
  Müsseler, Jochen; von Salm-Hoogstraeten, Sophia & Böffel, Christian