Now I Wanna Be a Dog: Exploring the Impact of Audio and Tactile Feedback on Animal Embodiment

Embodying a virtual creature or animal in Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming common, and can have numerous beneficial impacts. For instance, it can help actors improve their performance of a computer-generated creature, or it can endow the user with empathy towards threatened animal species. However, users must feel a sense of embodiment towards their virtual representation, commonly achieved by providing congruent sensory feedback. Providing effective visuo-motor feedback in dysmorphic bodies can be challenging due to human-animal morphology differences. Thus, the purpose of this study was to experiment with the inclusion of audio and audio-tactile feedback to begin unveiling their influence towards animal avatar embodiment. Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of different sensory feedback on participants’ embodiment in a dog avatar in an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE). The first experiment (n= 24) included audio, tactile, audio-tactile, and baseline conditions. The second experiment (n= 34) involved audio and baseline conditions only.