Can I Recognize My Body's Weight? The Influence of Shape and Texture on the Perception of Self

Abstract

The goal of this research was to investigate women's sensitivity to changes in their perceived weight by altering the body mass index (BMI) of the participants' personalized avatars displayed on a large-screen immersive display. We created the personalized avatars with a full-body 3D scanner that records the participants' body geometry and texture. We altered the weight of the personalized avatars to produce changes in BMI while keeping height, arm length, and inseam fixed and exploited the correlation between body geometry and anthropometric measurements encapsulated in a statistical body shape model created from thousands of body scans. In a 2 × 2 psychophysical experiment, we investigated the relative importance of visual cues, namely shape (own shape vs. an average female body shape with equivalent height and BMI to the participant) and texture (own photorealistic texture or checkerboard pattern texture) on the ability to accurately perceive own current body weight (by asking the participant, "Is it the same weight as you?"). Our results indicate that shape (where height and BMI are fixed) had little effect on the perception of body weight. Interestingly, the participants perceived their body weight veridically when they saw their own photo-realistic texture. As compared to avatars with photo-realistic texture, the avatars with checkerboard texture needed to be significantly thinner in order to represent the participants' current weight. This suggests that in general the avatars with checkerboard texture appeared bigger. The range that the participants accepted as their own current weight was approximately a 0.83% to −6.05% BMI change tolerance range around their perceived weight. Both the shape and the texture had an effect on the reported similarity of the body parts and the whole avatar to the participant's body. This work has implications for new measures for patients with body image disorders, as well as researchers interested in creating personalized avatars for games, training applications, or virtual reality.

Perceiving Absolute Scale in Virtual Environments: How Theory and Application Have Mutually Informed the Role of Body-Based Perception

“…New emerging technologies allow for 3D fullbody scanning so that avatars are matched to a specific user in visual features and body size (Piryankova et al, 2014). Having the flexibility to vary the visual body features of an avatar in realistic ways could address further questions about the role of cognition.…”

Perception of strength and power of realistic male characters

“…Virtual reality studies have demonstrated that self-avatars with different ages [Hershfield et al 2011], shapes [Piryankova et al 2014], and races [Kilteni et al 2013] alter participants' perception and attitudes. Future work could investigate if self-perception of strength and power can also be influenced by a modified self-avatar.…”

As Light as your Footsteps

“…A within-subjects design was preferred given the greater variability of body size perception between subjects [22] due to psychological condition, thoughts about ideal body size, media exposure or body dissatisfaction [39]. As in other studies assessing perceived body size [10,27,39] we adopted various strategies to compensate for practice /habituation bias.…”

“…Perceived Body Weight: To measure perceived body weight, we used a body visualization tool (bodyvisualizer.com; see Figure 3) adopted by other studies for the same purpose [39]. People adjusted the weight related dimension of the body of a 3D avatar displayed on the screen to correspond to their perceived body size [10,27,39].…”

“…People adjusted the weight related dimension of the body of a 3D avatar displayed on the screen to correspond to their perceived body size [10,27,39].…”