Impact of Virtual Self-Touch on the Embodiment of Avatars with Different Body Sizes

This study explores the impact of our developed virtual self-touch (VST), where participants touch an avatar as a substitute body and receive haptic feedback, on updating the body schema for intervention in motor control strategies. VST was tested with ten participants using avatars of normal size and those with elongated forearms. The effectiveness of the method was evaluated using perceptual drift and reaching tasks, comparing VST to the arm swing task (AST). The results showed that VST enhanced perceptual drift and affected motor control strategy more than AST, suggesting its role in altering the body schema. The effect of this motor control strategy leads to rehabilitation.