Reversed effect of spatial compatibility when taking avatar’s perspective

Abstract

If an actor takes the perspective of an avatar, spatial dissociations could arise between the perspective of the actor and the perspective of the avatar. These become particularly interesting when solving spatial compatibility tasks. Effects of spatial compatibility are usually explained by a match or mismatch of automatic behavioural tendencies and intentional mapping processes. The question is whether actors develop such behavioural tendencies for an avatar and thereby are able to neglect their own perspective. In the experiments, actors take the perspective of the avatar and pressed ipsilateral or contralateral left-right keys in response to lateralised coloured discs. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that compatibility effects are tied to the avatar but not to the actor. Experiment 3 revealed that participants could ignore the perspective of the avatar. We concluded that the automatic behavioural tendencies in compatibility experiments are not as automatic as sometimes assumed. It is likely that the present results are not only applicable to the use of avatars but also to other human-controlled robots and drones.

Perceived Ownership of Avatars Influences Visual Perspective Taking

“…We used two different instructions for the same task to top–down influence perceived ownership of an avatar: the setup and the avatars used were similar to the ones of Böffel and Müsseler (2017) and Müsseler et al (2017) . The participants were confronted with an avatar that was displayed on a screen and sitting opposite them ( Figure 1 ).…”

“…This agency attribution seems to aide visual PT ( Zwickel, 2009 ). In past studies we showed that PT occurs toward avatars, regardless of whether PT is needed to complete the task ( Müsseler et al, 2017 ) or not ( Böffel and Müsseler, 2017 ). In the present study we confronted participants with an avatar that was presented opposite to them on a computer screen in a top–down view.…”

“…In the present study we use SRC effects to measure visual PT ( Böffel and Müsseler, 2017 ; Müsseler et al, 2017 ). Previous studies that follow a similar approach point toward a complicated situation.…”

“… Gardner and Potts (2010) and Taylor et al (2016) show that under certain circumstances feature codes can be created from the objects perspective instead. Müsseler et al (2017) demonstrated that SRC effects can arise from an avatar’s point of view, rather than the person’s own in situations that force the person to take the avatar’s perspective in a SRC task and Böffel and Müsseler (2017) showed that these effects can occur even in a Simon task, in which the avatar’s orientation is irrelevant. However, these compatibility changes only occur when the dimensional overlap between stimulus and response position from the participant’s point of view is low, or the participant’s control over the avatar’s movements is high.…”

“…Overall, PT toward avatars is able to influence SRC, which indicates a change in the mental representation of the situation, if the right conditions are met. As a result, PT can lead to an effect of spatial correspondence as seen from the avatar’s point of view rather than the person’s, effectively reversing the expected effect of spatial compatibility under certain circumstances ( Böffel and Müsseler, 2017 ; Müsseler et al, 2017 ). Assuming that SRC effects arise based on the mental representation of a task, it is a useful tool to quantify PT because it allows us to infer how the stimulus location is coded ( Ottoboni et al, 2005 ; Hommel, 2011 ).…”