2025/11/01 by Wen-Jie Tseng, Kasper Hornbæk · 1 voice
Computer Science · Psychology · Neuroscience · #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts #Action Observation and Synchronization #Tactile and Sensory Interactions
paper · doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103662
openalex publication_date 2025/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
While body ownership is central to research in virtual reality (VR), it remains unclear how experiencing an avatar over time shapes a person’s summary judgment of it. Such a judgment could be a simple average of the bodily experience, or it could follow the peak-end rule, which suggests that people’s retrospective judgment correlates with the most intense and recent moments in their experiencing. We systematically manipulate body ownership over a three-minute avatar embodiment using visuomotor asynchrony. Asynchrony here serves to negatively influence body ownership. We conducted one lab study ( N = 28 ) and two online studies (pilot: N = 97 and formal: N = 128 ) to investigate the influence of visuomotor asynchrony given (1) order, meaning early or late, (2) duration and magnitude while controlling the order, and (3) the interaction between order and magnitude. Our results indicate a significant order effect—later visuomotor asynchrony decreased the rating of body-ownership judgments more—but no convergent evidence on magnitude. We discuss how body-ownership judgments may be formed sensorily or affectively. • Late asynchrony reduces body-ownership judgments more than early asynchrony. • The end effect shows potential designs for enhancing virtual body experiences. • The peak effect of body-ownership judgments is challenging to influence.