A master thesis from Aalborg University
The Virtual Heart Illusion: An investigation into the effect of representing the heart in VR over the Sense of Embodiment, Interoceptive Sensitivity, and activity of the real heart
Author(s)
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2022
Submitted on
2022-05-25
Pages
41 pages
Abstract
Representing the human body within Virtual Reality Environments represents an area which is still unexplored. However, its powerful immersive capabilities highlight the potential for building exceptional experiences, or aiding the the human body via processes that are still being explored. Starting from the previous studies which focused on representing the activity of the body internal processes (e.g., Monti et al. (2020)), and considering studies focused on other technologies (e.g., AR – Suzuki et al. (2013) the current work focuses on investigating the effects of representing the heart within a Virtual Environment over the Sense of Ownership, Interoceptive Sensitivity, as well as activity of the real heart. Three conditions are employed: (1) synchronized, (2) manipulated, and (3) random heart activities. The study was conducted on 19 people, who took part in a within subject experiment, where each participant was exposed to all three conditions. The results suggest that the condition where the heart was synchronized yielded the highest scores for the SoE, while lowering the virtual heart rate leads to a reduction of the subject’s real heart rate.
Representing the human body within Virtual Reality Environments represents an area which is still unexplored. However, its powerful immersive capabilities highlight the potential for building exceptional experiences, or aiding the the human body via processes that are still being explored. Starting from the previous studies which focused on representing the activity of the body internal processes (e.g., Monti et al. (2020)), and considering studies focused on other technologies (e.g., AR – Suzuki et al. (2013) the current work focuses on investigating the effects of representing the heart within a Virtual Environment over the Sense of Ownership, Interoceptive Sensitivity, as well as activity of the real heart. Three conditions are employed: (1) synchronized, (2) manipulated, and (3) random heart activities. The study was conducted on 19 people, who took part in a within subject experiment, where each participant was exposed to all three conditions. The results suggest that the condition where the heart was synchronized yielded the highest scores for the SoE, while lowering the virtual heart rate leads to a reduction of the subject’s real heart rate.
Keywords
VR ; Heart ; Manipulations
Documents
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