Objective agency measurement of different hand appearances in virtual reality with intentional binding

Abstract

The feeling of being in control of the actions of a self-avatar (sense of agency) is a crucial factor of VR embodiment, but the exact role of avatar appearance in this context is not clear yet. Current research on sense of agency in the field of VR is often limited to subjective measures, like self-reports or questionnaires. In the field of neuroscience, however, objective measures to evaluate the agency are used, for instance, the Intentional Binding (IB) paradigm based on time estimation with the Libet clock. In this work we compare the sense of agency towards two fully articulated virtual hands with different levels of visual realism using the IB paradigm. While both hand representations elicted a sense of agency, we did not find a significant effect of appearance.