Acting your avatar’s age: effects of virtual reality avatar embodiment on real life walking speed

Figures & data

Figure 1. Layout of locale utilized in the experiment.

Figure 2. Avatar faces of female (upper row) and male (middle row) for avatars in the old (left column) and young (right column) age conditions and an illustration of avatar usage (lower row).

Table 1. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) across several variables measured in the two groups who experienced immersive virtual reality (young and old avatar) and the control group who did not enter virtual reality. Further includes the Median (Mdn) and interquartile range (IQR) of the Karolinska sleepiness scale. Statistically significant differences between groups are marked by the first letter of the differing comparison group.

	Young Avatar		Old Avatar		Control Group
Variable	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD
Baseline walking time (tBRtoTR)
– First half of walk [s]	9.69	2.07	9.59	2.16	9.63	1.63
– Second half of walk [s]	9.89	2.33	10.17	1.64	9.88	1.21
Post-embodiment walking time (tTRtoBR)
– First half of walk [s]	9.16^O	1.35	10.51^YC	1.46	9.48^O	1.46
– Second half of walk [s]	10.37	1.61	10.33	1.45	9.77	1.11
Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ)
– Spatial presence	4.54	0.80	4.61	0.53	-	-
– Involvement	4.58	1.18	4.61	1.23	-	-
Body ownership	3.46	0.80	3.52	0.99	-	-
Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ)
– Total	24.99	16.62	20.05	20.02	31.87	23.03
– Nausea	15.61^C	8.89	9.92 ^C	10.95	25.30^YO	23.47
– Oculomotor	22.05	15.32	20.01	22.16	25.05	19.15
– Disorientation	29.74	35.71	23.39	26.62	35.70	28.68
	Mdn	IQR	Mdn	IQR	Mdn	IQR
Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS)	2	1	1	1	1	1

C = differs significantly from control group at α = 0.05,

O = differs significantly from old avatar group at α = 0.05,

Y = differs significantly from young avatar group at α = 0.05

Figure 3. Means of the post-embodiment walking times (from the test room to the briefing room) for the groups who previously embodied either young or old avatars in immersive virtual reality, and for the control group who did not use immersive virtual reality technologies. Error bars display standard errors of the mean.

Figure 4. Conditional effects of avatar age on post-embodiment walking speed dependent on levels of the Igroup presence questionnaire’s spatial presence dimension: (a) illustration of predicted group differences; (b) predicted group differences with 95%-confidence intervals (negative values indicate faster old avatar group).