Perceptual uncertainty and action consequences independently affect hand movements in a virtual environment
Date
18/12/2020Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
When we use virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) environments to investigate behaviour or train motor skills, we expect that the insights or skills acquired in VR/AR transfer to real-world settings. Motor behaviour is strongly influenced by perceptual uncertainty and the expected consequences of actions. VR/AR differ in both of these aspects from natural environments. Perceptual information in VR/AR is less reliable than in natural environments, and the knowledge of acting in a virtual environment might modulate our expectations of action consequences. Using mirror reflections to create a virtual environment free of perceptual artefacts, we show that hand movements in an obstacle avoidance task systematically differed between real and virtual obstacles and that these behavioural differences occurred independent of the quality of the available perceptual information. This suggests that even when perceptual correspondence between natural and virtual environments is achieved, action correspondence does not necessarily follow due to the disparity in the expected consequences of actions in the two environments.
Citation
Giesel , M , Nowakowska , A , Harris , J M & Hesse , C 2020 , ' Perceptual uncertainty and action consequences independently affect hand movements in a virtual environment ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 10 , 22307 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-78378-z
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2045-2322Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
Supported by Leverhulme Trust Grant RPG-2017-232 awarded to CH and JH.Collections
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