Perceived Ownership of Avatars Influences Visual Perspective Taking

Böffel, Christian; Müsseler, Jochen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00743

Cited by 22 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Identification with an avatar in a game entails psychological interpersonal skills, such as Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities [33]. ToM is defined as the "the ability to attribute and reason about mental states of others" [34].…”

Section: Imaging Studies On Self-concept and Theory Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Who Am I” and “How Should I Be”: a Systematic Review on Self-Concept and Avatar Identification in Gaming Disorder

et al. 2020

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Purpose of Review Gaming disorder (GD) appears to be associated with self-concept deficits and increased identification with one's avatar. The goal of this literature review is to highlight study findings assessing psychological and neurobiological correlates of self-concept-related characteristics and avatar identification in GD. Recent Findings The review was based on three literature researches on GD: (1) self-esteem, (2) emotional, social, and academic self-concept domains and avatar identification, and (3) neurobiological correlates of self-concept and avatar identification. The results indicate that GD is associated with decreased self-esteem as well as deficits in physical, social, and emotional self-concept domains. A relatively stable relationship between higher avatar identification and GD was reported in addicted gamers. Furthermore, addicted gamers showed increased activation of brain regions associated with Theory-of-Mind processing while contemplating their own avatar. Summary The results point towards impairments in self-concept and increased identification with the virtual gaming character in addicted gamers. This virtual compensation fosters the formation of an idealized self-concept, which grows increasingly distant from their own self-image. Thus, additional empirically based psychological interventions should focus on the development of a realistic self-image by reducing the dysfunctional discrepancy between the ideal self and the real self.

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Section: Imaging Studies On Self-concept and Theory Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Who Am I” and “How Should I Be”: a Systematic Review on Self-Concept and Avatar Identification in Gaming Disorder

et al. 2020

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“…This finding confirms the importance of action effects for perspective taking (cf. Böffel & Müsseler, 2018, 2019a and shows moreover that the modulation of the sagittal SNARC effects in Experiment 1 was largely driven by visual left/right hand movements of the avatar. The results of the present study lead to the conclusion that the distal effects are mapped onto a horizontal axis, based on the presence of the avatar alone.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…However, it is hard to imagine that the same explanation holds up in our current study, as the situation in our experiment gives the participant complete control over the avatar, turning it into a tool-use scenario rather than a social interaction. Past studies that tried to manipulate the perception of an avatar as either independent or controlled found larger avatar-based compatibility effects in the controlled scenario (Böffel & Müsseler, 2018). This increases the likelihood that the mechanisms behind these avatarcompatibility effects are different compared to the social co-representation of another person's action.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The idea of using SRC effects to examine other cognitive phenomena is not new (e.g., Hommel, 2011) and has already been used in the context of perspective taking to quantify the influence of a conflicting reference frame, either of a person (Freundlieb, Kovács, & Sebanz, 2016), an avatar (Böffel & Müsseler, 2018, 2019a, b, 2020aMüsseler et al, 2019) or even simple manikins (Baess, Weber, & Bermeitinger, 2018). Because SRC has been shown to be dependent on context and intention (Hommel, 1993;Müsseler, Aschersleben, Arning, & Proctor, 2012), it seems to emerge based on the mental representation of an event, rather than on its mere physical reality.…”

Section: Stimulus-response Compatibility As An Indicator Of Cognitivementioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatial–numerical associations in the presence of an avatar

Böffel

Herbst

Lindemann

et al. 2020

Psychological Research

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When we interact with other people or avatars, they often provide an alternative spatial frame of reference compared to our own. Previous studies introduced avatars into stimulus–response compatibility tasks and demonstrated compatibility effects as if the participant was viewing the task from the avatar’s point of view. However, the origin of this effect of perspective taking remained unclear. To distinguish changes in stimulus coding from changes in response coding, caused by the avatar, two experiments were conducted that combined a SNARC task and a spontaneous visual perspective taking task to specify the role of response coding. We observed compatibility effects that were based on the avatar’s perspective rather than the participants’ own. Because number magnitude was independent of the avatar’s perspective, the observed changes in compatibility caused by different perspectives indicate changes in response coding. These changes in response coding are only significant when they are accompanied by visual action effects.

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“…Even though compatibility effects are overall reliable, they can be influenced by additional manipulations, for example, regarding intention (Hommel, 1993a), reference frames (Böffel & Müsseler, 2019b, 2019a, 2020Hommel & Lippa, 1995;Müsseler et al 2019), the frequency of compatible and incompatible trials (Hommel, 1994), or instruction (Böffel & Müsseler, 2018;Heister & Schroeder-Heister, 1994). In the present study, we examine whether one of the central claims of the dimensional overlap model, the automatic activation of the spatially corresponding response, holds true in the context of the avatar-compatibility task in which compatibility is manipulated by the presentation of an avatar.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No evidence for automatic response activation with target onset in the avatar-compatibility task

Böffel

Müsseler

2020

Mem Cogn

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When people take the perspective of an avatar and perform a stimulus-response compatibility task, they generally show the same compatibility effects that are expected from the avatar’s position instead of their own. In this study, we investigated if these effects are caused by automatic response activation, a concept featured in dual-route models of stimulus-response compatibility. In two experiments we asked 24 participants each to perform a compatibility task from an avatar’s point of view. We introduced a delay between the presentation of the target and the avatar in half of the trials so that the participants had to wait until the avatar appeared to select the correct response. Because the automatic response activation is known to decay quickly, its influence is eliminated in this condition. In contrast to the prediction by the automatic response activation account, we observed a larger compatibility effect in the delayed condition with orthogonal (Experiment 1) and parallel (Experiment 2) stimulus-response pairings. Additionally, distributional analyses of the compatibility effects did not support the automaticity predictions. We conclude that these results call into question the role of automatic response activation for spatial compatibility in general and perspective-based compatibility effects in particular.

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Perceived Ownership of Avatars Influences Visual Perspective Taking

Cited by 22 publications

References 41 publications

“Who Am I” and “How Should I Be”: a Systematic Review on Self-Concept and Avatar Identification in Gaming Disorder

“Who Am I” and “How Should I Be”: a Systematic Review on Self-Concept and Avatar Identification in Gaming Disorder

Spatial–numerical associations in the presence of an avatar

No evidence for automatic response activation with target onset in the avatar-compatibility task

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