Conditions for Inducing Sense of Body Ownership to Bird Avatar in Virtual Environment

Abstract

Previous works have reported that a body ownership illusion gives a user a feeling that an avatar, in a virtual environment, becomes their own body. While many studies investigated the cause of the body ownership illusion on a human-like avatar, few studies have been focused for an avatar whose figure is a non-humanlike, such as an animal. Thus, we conducted some experiments to investigate the specific conditions that induce a body ownership illusion to a bird avatar, and compared the strength of sense of body ownership between a human avatar and a bird avatar. We evaluated how characteristic bird features, such as flying action, short body, and sounds of flapping, affected the sense of body ownership. The results suggested that motion synchronization between a subject's real body and an avatar's one induces a sense of body ownership just the same as the case of a human-like avatar. Furthermore, we confirm that there is no difference between a human and a bird avatar in the subject's rating of body ownership. Specifically, flying action, a characteristic particular to birds, can enhance the sense of body ownership for a bird avatar, but it is also effective for a human-like avatar. Interestingly, the short height of the body and the sound of flapping do not affect the sense of body ownership.