Postural instability-induced compensative movements in virtual reality

Abstract

During virtual reality usage, two egocentric mental representations are constructed simultaneously. The first representation is rooted in the physical reality in which VR is set up, and the second originates from the mental construction of a computer-generated virtual environment. In both cases, participants configure their posture based on multimodal stimuli while responding to environmental cues. In most cases, the postural cues provided by the digital and real environment may be conflicting. In this study, 50 right-handed volunteers were enrolled. In a pre-test session, attentional focus-related personality bias (perspective-taking) was assessed, and afterward, postural movements and presence experiences were measured while the participants performed a spatial orientation task in VR. Participants were placed in an upright position with their right hands positioned in front of a physically real point on the laboratory wall. Afterward, participants were exposed to a VR environment in which they performed a room-tilting task. Participants with higher hand-related presence scores showed decreased compensatory hand drift in the VR environment. The rate of contralateral hand drift showed a reversed association with the intensity of the perspective-taking trait. VR-induced postural instability can be attenuated by the compensative hand drift that alleviates the conflicts between the two rival inner VR and outer VR environments that compete for attention and provide different reference cues.