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The Influence of Virtual Agent Visibility in Virtual Reality Cognitive Training

Authors:

Fariba Mostajeran,

Frank SteinickeAuthors Info & Claims

SUI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

Article No.: 14, Pages 1 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/3607822.3614526

Published: 13 October 2023 Publication History

Abstract

For avatars - virtual bodys controlled by a human - an established visualization is to display incomplete visualizations, e.g. only head and torso. However, the preference for the body visibility of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) - fully computer generated virtual humans - may differ. Additionally, the presence of IVAs can have a psychological effect on users that are similar to that of a real human, e.g. facilitation or inhibition of cognitive performance. To investigate the connection between these two topics, we examine the effects of an IVA’s level of body visibility on the users’ sense of social presence and task performance in virtual reality. In a within-subject user study, 30 participants solved anagram tasks in the presence of five different levels of visibility of our IVA: voice-only, mouth-only, head-only, upper body and full body. While we could not find any differences in the task performance of the users, lower levels of visibility led to a decreased feeling of social presence. Furthermore, by using eye tracking, we found that visually rich representations were looked at for a longer amount of time, but only during the explanation of the task. Afterwards, the users did not pay much visual attention to the agent anymore. Finally, preferences of the users show that the chosen representation is dependent on some factors; most importantly, it should support the users, but not distract them from their task.

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Cited By

Hajahmadi SMostajeran FHeuer KLux AMends-Cole GCascarano PSteinicke FMarfia G(2024)PuzzleAide: Comparing Audio and Embodied Assistants for MR Puzzle-SolvingProceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3677386.3688899(1-3)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677386.3688899

Index Terms

The Influence of Virtual Agent Visibility in Virtual Reality Cognitive Training
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SUI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

October 2023

505 pages

ISBN:9798400702815

DOI:10.1145/3607822

Editors:
Tony Huang
UTS, Sydney, Australia
,
Misha Sra
UC Santa Barbara, USA
,
Ferran Argelaguet
INRIA, France
,
Pedro Lopes
University of Chicago, USA
,
Mayra Barrera Machuca
Dalhousie University, Canada

Copyright © 2023 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 13 October 2023

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Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

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SUI '23

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SUI '23: ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

October 13 - 15, 2023

NSW, Sydney, Australia

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Cited By

Hajahmadi SMostajeran FHeuer KLux AMends-Cole GCascarano PSteinicke FMarfia G(2024)PuzzleAide: Comparing Audio and Embodied Assistants for MR Puzzle-SolvingProceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3677386.3688899(1-3)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677386.3688899

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