The effects of body direction and posture on taking the perspective of a humanoid avatar in a virtual environment

Visual perspective taking is inferring how the world looks to another person. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment, and which factor of the avatar is effective for the facilitation effect. We used a task that involved reporting how an object looks by a simple direction judgment, either from the avatar’s position or from the position of an empty chair. We found that the humanoid avatar’s presence improved task performance. Furthermore, the avatar’s facilitation effect was observed only when the avatar was facing the visual stimulus to be judged; performance was worse when it faced backwards than when there was only an empty chair facing forwards. This suggests that the avatar does not simply attract spatial attention, but the posture of the avatar is crucial for the facilitation effect. In addition, when the directions of the head and the torso were opposite (i.e., an impossible posture), the avatar’s facilitation effect disappeared. Thus, visual perspective taking might not be facilitated by the avatar when its posture is biomechanically impossible because we cannot embody it. Finally, even when the avatar’s head of the possible posture was covered with a bucket, the facilitation effect was found with the forward-facing avatar rather than the backward-facing avatar. That is, the head/gaze direction cue, or presumably the belief that the visual stimulus to be judged can be seen by the avatar, was not required. These results suggest that explicit perspective taking is facilitated by embodiment towards humanoid avatars.

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The effects of body direction and posture on taking the perspective of a humanoid avatar in a virtual environment

10.21203/rs.3.rs-133156/v2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sachiyo Ueda ◽

Kazuya Nagamachi ◽

Maki Sugimoto ◽

Masahiko Inami ◽

Michiteru Kitazaki

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Virtual Environment ◽

Perspective Taking ◽

Attention Capture ◽

Visual Perspective ◽

Facilitation Effect ◽

Visual Perspective Taking ◽

The World ◽

Empty Chair ◽

Direction Judgment

Abstract Visual perspective taking is inferring how the world looks to another person. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment. We used a task that involved reporting how an object looks by a simple direction judgment either from the avatar’s position or an empty chair’s position. We found that the humanoid avatar’s presence improved task performance. Furthermore, the avatar’s facilitation effect was observed only when the avatar was facing the visual stimulus to be judged; performance was worse when it faced backwards than when there was only an empty chair faced forwards. When the directions of the head and the torso were opposite (i.e., an impossible posture), the avatar’s facilitation effect disappeared. The performance was better in the order of the condition that both the head and the torso were facing forward, the condition that both the head and the torso were facing backward, the condition that the torso was facing toward the stimulus while the head was facing away, and the condition that the head was facing toward the stimulus while the torso was facing away. Thus, visual perspective taking might not be facilitated by the avatar when its posture is biomechanically impossible. These results suggest that the facilitation effect is based not only on attention capture but also on visual perspective taking of humanoid avatar.

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Effect of Body Direction on Taking the Perspective of a Humanoid Avatar in a Virtual Environment

10.21203/rs.3.rs-133156/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sachiyo Ueda ◽

Kazuya Nagamachi ◽

Maki Sugimoto ◽

Masahiko Inami ◽

Michiteru Kitazaki

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Virtual Environment ◽

Visual Stimulus ◽

Perspective Taking ◽

Social Communication ◽

Attention Capture ◽

Facilitation Effect ◽

Direction Judgment

Abstract Understanding another’s viewpoint is the ability to infer others’ minds, which is important for successful social communication. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment. We used a task that involved reporting how an object looks by a simple direction judgment either from the avatar’s position or an empty chair’s position. We found that the humanoid avatar’s presence improved task performance. Furthermore, the avatar’s facilitation effect was observed only when the avatar was facing the visual stimulus to be judged; performance was worse when it faced backwards. This suggests that the facilitation effect is based not only on attention capture but also the embodied perspective-taking to the avatar.

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Developing a protocol and experimental setup for using a humanoid robot to assist children with autism to develop visual perspective taking skills

Paladyn Journal of Behavioral Robotics ◽

10.1515/pjbr-2019-0013 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 167-179 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Luke Jai Wood ◽

Ben Robins ◽

Gabriella Lakatos ◽

Dag Sverre Syrdal ◽

Abolfazl Zaraki ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Perspective Taking ◽

Humanoid Robot ◽

Children With Autism ◽

Fundamental Aspect ◽

Visual Perspective ◽

Inclusion Criteria ◽

Future Studies ◽

Visual Perspective Taking ◽

The World

AbstractVisual Perspective Taking (VPT) is the ability to see the world from another person’s perspective, taking into account what they see and how they see it, drawing upon both spatial and social information. Children with autism often find it difficult to understand that other people might have perspectives, viewpoints, beliefs and knowledge that are different from their own, which is a fundamental aspect of VPT. In this research we aimed to develop a methodology to assist children with autism develop their VPT skills using a humanoid robot and present results from our first long-term pilot study. The games we devised were implemented with the Kaspar robot and, to our knowledge, this is the first attempt to improve the VPT skills of children with autism through playing and interacting with a humanoid robot.We describe in detail the standard pre- and post-assessments that we performed with the children in order to measure their progress and also the inclusion criteria derived fromthe results for future studies in this field. Our findings suggest that some children may benefit from this approach of learning about VPT, which shows that this approach merits further investigation.

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Robot-mediated intervention can assist children with autism to develop visual perspective taking skills

Paladyn Journal of Behavioral Robotics ◽

10.1515/pjbr-2021-0007 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 87-101

Author(s):

Gabriella Lakatos ◽

Luke Jai Wood ◽

Dag Sverre Syrdal ◽

Ben Robins ◽

Abolfazl Zaraki ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Perspective Taking ◽

Humanoid Robot ◽

Children With Autism ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Fundamental Aspect ◽

Visual Perspective ◽

Children With Asd ◽

Visual Perspective Taking ◽

Perspective Drawing ◽

The World

AbstractIn this work, we tested a recently developed novel methodology to assist children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) improve their Visual Perspective Taking (VPT) and Theory of Mind (ToM) skills using the humanoid robot Kaspar. VPT is the ability to see the world from another person’s perspective, drawing upon both social and spatial information. Children with ASD often find it difficult to understand that others might have perspectives, viewpoints and beliefs that are different from their own, which is a fundamental aspect of both VPT and ToM. The games we designed were implemented as the first attempt to study if these skills can be improved in children with ASD through interacting with a humanoid robot in a series of trials. The games involved a number of different actions with the common goal of helping the children to see the world from the robot’s perspective. Children with ASD were recruited to the study according to specific inclusion criteria that were determined in a previous pilot study. In order to measure the potential impact of the games on the children, three pre- and post-tests (Smarties, Sally–Anne and Charlie tests) were conducted with the children. Our findings suggest that children with ASD can indeed benefit from this approach of robot-assisted therapy.

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Group membership and the effects on visual perspective taking

10.31234/osf.io/wnrk6 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Dana Schneider ◽

Anne Grigutsch ◽

Matthias Schurz ◽

Romi Zäske ◽

Stefan R. Schweinberger

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Mental State ◽

Perspective Taking ◽

Visual Perspective ◽

Interference Effects ◽

Social Categories ◽

Visual Perspective Taking ◽

Mental State Ascription ◽

Ethnic Nationality ◽

Level 1

It has been hypothesized that visual perspective-taking, a basic Theory of Mind mechanism, might operate quite automatically particularly in terms of ´what´ someone else sees. As such we were interested in whether different social categories of an agent (e.g., gender, race, nationality) influence this mental state ascription mechanism. We tested this assumption by investigating the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm using agents with different ethnic nationality appearances. A group of self-identified Turkish and German participants were asked to make visual perspective judgments from their own perspective (self-judgment) as well as from the perspective of a prototypical Turkish or German agent (other-judgment). The respective related interference effects - altercentric and egocentric interferences - were measured. When making other-judgments, German participants showed increased egocentric interferences for Turkish compared to German agents. Turkish participants showed no ethnic group influence for egocentric interferences and reported feeling associated with the German and Turkish nationality to a similar extent. For self-judgments, altercentric interferences were of similar magnitude for both ethnic agents in both participant groups. Overall this indicates that in level-1 visual perspective-taking, other-judgments and related egocentric interferences are sensitive to social categories and are better described as a flexible, controlled and deliberate mental state ascription mechanism. In contrast, self-judgments and related altercentric interference effects are better described as automatic, efficient and unconscious mental state ascription mechanisms. In a broader sense the current results suggest that we should stop considering automaticity an all-or-none principle when it comes theory of mind processes.

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