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Show M»s*it5ii**ki PSYCHOLOGY SENIOR THESIS SPRING 2013 Kyle Gagnon Jeanine Stefanucci 184 THE INFLUENCE OF VIRTUAL OTHERS ON JUDGMENTS OF SELF PASSAGE Zeljka Macura (Kyle Gagnon, Jeanine Stefanucci) Department of Psychology University of Utah Individuals perceive their ability to act in the environment, termed affordances, by evaluating the relationship between their o w n capabilities and dimensions and the properties of the environmental objects and surfaces that surround them. J.J. Gibson (1979/1986) argued that affordances convey possible interactions between animals and their environments (Stoffregen et al., 1999). Since then, much research has argued that understanding one's body size is critical for perceiving action capabilities (Gibson, 1979/1986; Mark, 2007; Ishak et al., 2008; Witt et al., 2012; Ramenzoni et al., 2010; Stefanucci et al., 2009; Oudejans et al., 1996). Recent work also suggests that observers can perceive their o w n affordances, as well as affordances for another's actions (Stoffregen et al., 1999; Mark, 2007). While other research has found that the presence of another person influences a participant's perception of their o w n action capabilities (Gagnon et al., 2013). The current study asks whether another person is capable of influencing one's self-perception of aperture passage. The participants (N=23) completed 120 trials in virtual reality, in which they judged whether they or an avatar (in counter-balanced order) could pass through various aperture widths without turning their shoulders or touching the poles. There were five different avatar widths that were scaled to the participant's width and presented randomly throughout the experiment (i.e., 20 % smaller, 1 0 % smaller, equal to participant, 1 0 % larger, and 2 0 % larger). Afterwards, the participants completed a matching task for which they estimated the widest part of each avatar. W e hypothesized that viewing virtual avatars of different sizes would influence self-judgments of aperture passage and that participants would accurately judge what aperture widths the avatars could pass through. The results indicate that participants are capable of accurately judging their own ability to pass through various aperture widths, regardless of avatar width. However, judgments made for the avatar's ability to pass through the apertures were accurate only w h e n the avatar was the same size as the participant. Participants judged that larger avatars were able to pass through aperture widths that they actually could not fit through and judged that smaller avatars could not pass through aperture widths that they actually could fit through. The matching task showed |
