Virtual Reality Lab - Universitat de Barcelona

Different virtual reality researches have given great importance to embodiment and the elements that increase embodiment’s intensity. This study aims to assess the influence of embodiment on body distortions with a non clinical sample of 50 subjects. The experiment consists in exposing the person to a progressive enlargement of the avatar’s body mass index while is receiving visotactile stimulation.

Participants are randomly assigned into one of these two groups: control group (asynchronous visotactile stimulation) and experimental group (synchronous visotactile stimulation). Embodiment’s measures are taken from a VAS question of Embodiment Questionnaire (EQ) and body distortion’s measures are taken from the Figural Drawing Scale for Body Image Assessment (BIAS-BD).

The results show a significant group effect on the degree of embodiment, there is larger embodiment index in the synchronous stimulation than in the asynchronous stimulation. Nevertheless, regarding body distortion, its behavior and degree are maintained in a very similar way in the synchronous stimulation as well as in the asynchronous stimulation. Moreover, in the condition with the greatest body distortion index, the embodiment has diminished compared with the other embodiment scores. More studies are necessary to determine embodiment and body distortion processes.