Previous studies of human-avatar interaction have shown that users are able to take the perspective of an avatar and act as if they were in the avatar's place. As a result, the positions of objects are encoded from the avatar's perspective and within the avatar's spatial reference frame, and avatar-based compatibility effects can be observed. In the present study, we confronted participants simultaneously with two different avatars that offered conflicting visual perspectives. We asked participants to take the perspective of one avatar while performing a Simon task. In one half of the experiment, participants controlled the hands of the instructed avatar, while in the other half, they controlled the opposite avatar. We used stimulus-response compatibility effects to examine which perspective participants took, allowing us to examine whether instruction or control was more important in resolving frame of reference conflicts. Overall, we observed a compatibility effect based on the position of the controlled avatar, even when the participants were instructed to take the perspective of the opposite avatar. This suggests that the stimuli were encoded from the perspective of the controlled avatar, despite receiving conflicting instructions. The influence of action control overpowered the top-down influence of the instruction.

Free games that are monetized by selling virtual items, such as cosmetic microtransactions for one's avatar, seem to offer a better gaming experience to paying players. To experimentally explore this phenomenon, the effects of character customization with cosmetic microtransactions on objective and self-estimated player performance, subjective identification with the avatar, fun and the players' perceived competence were examined in the game League of Legends. This study introduces a new laboratory-based, experimental task to objectively measure within-game player performance. Each participant performed this game-based task in two different conditions: With a character that was customized using a provided set of cosmetic microtransactions and with a default character. Results showed that customization increased subjective identification with the player character. However, objective performance measures were unaffected by this manipulation although the novel experimental approach provided reliable performance results. Additionally, identification was positively related to perceived competence, fun, and self-estimated performance. Implications for the design of cosmetic microtransactions and their influence on competitive gaming are discussed.

Today, avatars often represent users in digital worlds such as in video games or workplace applications. Avatars embody the user and perform their actions in these artificial environments. As a result, users sometimes develop the feeling that their self merges with their avatar. The user realizes that they are the avatar, but the avatar is also the user-meaning that avatar's appearance, character, and actions also affect their self. In the present paper, we first introduce the event-coding approach of the self and then argue based on the reviewed literature on human-avatar interaction that a self-controlled avatar can lead to avatar-self merging: the user sets their own goals in the virtual environment, plans and executes the avatar's actions, and compares the predicted with the actual motion outcomes of the avatar. This makes the user feel body ownership and agency over the avatar's action. Following the event-coding account, avatar-self merging should not be seen as an all-or-nothing process, but rather as a continuous process to which various factors contribute, including successfully taking the perspective of the avatar. Against this background, we discuss affective, cognitive, and visuo-spatial perspective taking of the avatar. As evidence for avatar-self merging, we present findings showing that when users take the avatar's perspective, they can show spontaneous behavioral tendencies that run counter to their own.

The paper compares the ability of users to take the perspective of a self-controlled avatar with the extent to which the perspective of an independently acting avatar is taken. In two experiments we showed that the participants were able to prioritize the perspective of the self-controlled avatar performing their actions over the perspective of the independently-acting avatar. Since the spatial frames of reference of both avatars were comparable, the participants' prioritization of the avatar's perspective was mainly attributed to the extent to which the participants had control over the avatar's actions (Experiment 1). Even in a direct confrontation with an independently-acting avatar, participants adopted the perspective of the self-controlled avatar (Experiment 2). Based on these results, we concluded that it is easier to take the perspective of a self-controlled avatar than an independently-acting avatar.

Humans often interact with avatars in video gaming, workplace, or health applications, for instance. The present research studied object affordances from an avatar's perspective. In two experiments, participants responded to objects with a left/right keypress, indicating whether the objects were upright or inverted. Task-irrelevant objects' handles were aligned with either the left or right hand of the actor and/or avatar. We hypothesized that actors respond faster when the handles are aligned, as compared to non-aligned, with the respective avatar hand (spatial alignment effect or object-based Simon effect). In Experiment 1, the spatial alignment effect was increased through the presentation of avatar hands as compared to when no hands were presented. In Experiment 2, the avatar perspective was rotated by 90° to the right and left of the actor's view. Here, the spatial alignment effect was guided by the avatar, suggesting that the actors took its perspective when perceiving objects' affordances.

When we interact with other people or avatars, they often provide an alternative spatial frame of reference compared to our own. Previous studies introduced avatars into stimulus-response compatibility tasks and demonstrated compatibility effects as if the participant was viewing the task from the avatar's point of view. However, the origin of this effect of perspective taking remained unclear. To distinguish changes in stimulus coding from changes in response coding, caused by the avatar, two experiments were conducted that combined a SNARC task and a spontaneous visual perspective taking task to specify the role of response coding. We observed compatibility effects that were based on the avatar's perspective rather than the participants' own. Because number magnitude was independent of the avatar's perspective, the observed changes in compatibility caused by different perspectives indicate changes in response coding. These changes in response coding are only significant when they are accompanied by visual action effects.

Objective The present study investigated whether and how different human-robot interactions in a physically shared workspace influenced human stimulus-response (SR) relationships. Background Human work is increasingly performed in interaction with advanced robots. Since human-robot interaction often takes place in physical proximity, it is crucial to investigate the effects of the robot on human cognition. Method In two experiments, we compared conditions in which humans interacted with a robot that they either remotely controlled or monitored under otherwise comparable conditions in the same shared workspace. The cognitive extent to which the participants took the robot's perspective served as a dependent variable and was evaluated with a SR compatibility task. Results The results showed pronounced compatibility effects from the robot's perspective when participants had to take the perspective of the robot during the task, but significantly reduced compatibility effects when human and robot did not interact. In both experiments, compatibility effects from the robot's perspective resulted in statistically significant differences in response times and in error rates between compatible and incompatible conditions. Conclusion We concluded that SR relationships from the perspective of the robot need to be considered when designing shared workspaces that require users to take the perspective of the robot. Application The results indicate changed compatibility relationships when users share their workplace with an interacting robot and therefore have to take its perspective from time to time. The perspective-dependent processing times are expected to be accompanied by corresponding error rates, which might affect-for instance-safety and efficiency in a production process.

When people take the perspective of an avatar and perform a stimulus-response compatibility task, they generally show the same compatibility effects that are expected from the avatar's position instead of their own. In this study, we investigated if these effects are caused by automatic response activation, a concept featured in dual-route models of stimulus-response compatibility. In two experiments we asked 24 participants each to perform a compatibility task from an avatar's point of view. We introduced a delay between the presentation of the target and the avatar in half of the trials so that the participants had to wait until the avatar appeared to select the correct response. Because the automatic response activation is known to decay quickly, its influence is eliminated in this condition. In contrast to the prediction by the automatic response activation account, we observed a larger compatibility effect in the delayed condition with orthogonal (Experiment1) and parallel (Experiment2) stimulus-response pairings. Additionally, distributional analyses of the compatibility effects did not support the automaticity predictions. We conclude that these results call into question the role of automatic response activation for spatial compatibility in general and perspective-based compatibility effects in particular.

The Simon effect is a stimulus-response compatibility effect in which the spatial dimension of the stimulus is task-irrelevant. This effect is often larger in reaction time (RT) for the stimulus located on the dominant-hand side of participants, for most of which it is the right hand, due to dominant-hand keypress responses being faster than non-dominant-hand responses. Experiment 1 demonstrated that pedal-press responses with the left and right feet show a similar asymmetry, favoring the right response for right-footed persons. The asymmetric pattern for keypress responses was absent in results of Wallace ( Journal of Experimental Psychology, 93 , 163–168, 1972 ) when participants were not permitted to see the response keys or their hands placed on the keys at any time during the experiment, whereas we found the asymmetric pattern in a recent study when participants placed their hands on the keys prior to their being covered up. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the Simon effect asymmetry for RT was evident even when participants were prevented from seeing the response device and their responding hands or feet. Although both hands and feet showed a Simon effect asymmetry in RT, consideration of incorrect responses suggested that whereas the asymmetry for hands is not due to a response bias, that for the feet may be due at least in part to such bias. Regardless, our results suggest that the Simon effect asymmetry is mainly an artifact of comparing conditions for which one response is made by the faster dominant right effector and the other with the slower non-dominant left effector.

The avatar-Simon task demonstrates that even task irrelevant avatars cause compatibility effects from their point of view, a result that can be interpreted within the frameworks of spontaneous spatial perspective taking and referential coding. In the present study, we used an avatar-Simon task with rapidly changing avatar positions and with simultaneous and non-simultaneous presentations to investigate the time course of this phenomenon. The results showed that participants took the avatar's perspective into account even when the avatar's position was randomized on a trial-by-trial basis. This avatar-compatibility effect was also observed when avatar and stimulus were presented simultaneously, even though the participants had no time to adopt the avatar's perspective in advance. However, the effect was much more pronounced when a delay between avatar and stimulus presentation was in place.

Previous studies have shown that users spontaneously take the position of a virtual avatar and solve spatial tasks from the avatar's perspective. The common impression is that users develop a spatial representation that allows them to "see" the world through the eyes of the avatar-that is, from its virtual perspective. In the present paper, this perspective taking assumption is compared with a referential coding assumption that allows the user to act on the basis of changed reference points. Using a spatial compatibility task, Experiment 1 demonstrated that visual perspective of the avatar was not the determining factor for taking the avatar's spatial position, but that its hand position (as the reference point) was decisive for the spatial coding of objects. Experiment 2 showed, however, that if the participant's hand position was not corresponding with the avatar's hand positions, the spatial referencing by the avatar's hands expired, thereby demonstrating the limits of referential coding. Still, the present findings indicated that referential coding may be at the base when taking the avatar's perspective. Accordingly, any study in perspective taking needs to consider and evaluate possible mechanisms of referential coding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

If an actor takes the perspective of an avatar, spatial dissociations could arise between the perspective of the actor and the perspective of the avatar. These become particularly interesting when solving spatial compatibility tasks. Effects of spatial compatibility are usually explained by a match or mismatch of automatic behavioural tendencies and intentional mapping processes. The question is whether actors develop such behavioural tendencies for an avatar and thereby are able to neglect their own perspective. In the experiments, actors take the perspective of the avatar and pressed ipsilateral or contralateral left-right keys in response to lateralised coloured discs. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that compatibility effects are tied to the avatar but not to the actor. Experiment 3 revealed that participants could ignore the perspective of the avatar. We concluded that the automatic behavioural tendencies in compatibility experiments are not as automatic as sometimes assumed. It is likely that the present results are not only applicable to the use of avatars but also to other human-controlled robots and drones.

In modern digital applications, users often interact with virtual representations of themselves or others, called avatars. We examined how these avatars and their perspectives influence stimulus-response compatibility in a Simon task. Participants responded to light/dark blue stimuli with left/right key presses in the presence of a task-irrelevant avatar. Changes in stimulus-response compatibility were used to quantify changes in the mental representation of the task and perspective taking toward this avatar. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that perspective taking for an avatar occurred in orthogonal stimulus-response mappings, causing a compatibility effect from the avatar's point of view. In the following two experiments we introduced a larger variety of angular disparities between the participant and avatar. In Experiment 3, the Simon effect with lateralized stimulus positions remained largely unaffected by the avatar, pointing toward an absence of perspective taking. In Experiment 4, after avatar hand movements were added in order to strengthen the participants' sense of agency over the avatar, a spatial compatibility effect from the avatar's perspective was observed again, and hints of the selective use of perspective taking on a trial-by-trial basis were found. Overall, the results indicate that users can incorporate the perspective of an avatar into their mental representation of a situation, even when this perspective is unnecessary to complete a task, but that certain contextual requirements have to be met.

It is known for some time that observers have difficulties to perceive correctly the onset position of a moving stimulus. In studies from the beginning of the last century an illusion was reported, in which the error was in the direction of motion (Fröhlich effect; Fröhlich, 1923), while later studies from the present century also described an illusion, in which the opposite error was observed (onset-repulsion effect; Thornton, 2002). The basic findings and the various interpretations of these errors are reviewed and weighted against each other (among them the accounts of sensation time, metacontrast, lateral inhibition, attentional mechanism and mental extrapolation). We also show how the conflict between the illusions might be resolved and discuss the theoretical intersections to further illusions. It is concluded that processes of attentional disengagement were neglected in the explanations of the Fröhlich effect so far.

Modern computer-based applications often require the user to interact with avatars. Depending on the task at hand, spatial dissociation between the orientations of the user and the avatars might arise. As a consequence, the user has to adopt the avatar's perspective and identify herself/himself with the avatar, possibly changing the user's self-representation in the process. The present study aims to identify the conditions that benefit this change of perspective with objective performance measures and subjective self-estimations by integrating the idea of avatar-ownership into the cognitive phenomenon of spatial compatibility. Two different instructions were used to manipulate a user's perceived ownership of an avatar in otherwise identical situations. Users with the high-ownership instruction reported higher levels of perceived ownership of the avatar and showed larger spatial compatibility effects from the avatar's point of view in comparison to the low ownership instruction. This supports the hypothesis that perceived ownership benefits perspective taking.

•Distance estimations and lane-change decisions were gathered with wing-mirror photos.•Vertical and horizontal wing-mirror settings were systematically varied.•Perceived distance to a following car was shorter than shown in mirror’s lower part.•Perceived distance was also affected by the visibility of the observer’s rear door.