The plasticity of the bodily self: how function and age shape the acceptance of virtual bodies.

我们的身体构造我们的心理体验。最近的研究表明，身体自我的感觉是灵活的。这在儿童身上尤其明显，因为他们的身体正在发育，感觉系统也在变化。是什么塑造了自己的身体形象，它有多灵活？这可以用新的虚拟现实方法来回答，我们可以控制一个移动的虚拟身体，从第一人称的角度来看。这些虚拟的身体在功能上可能与我们自己的身体不同——可以走得更远，可以穿过狭窄的空间，甚至可以飞行。通过测量虚拟身体功能的变化对身体所有权和控制权的影响，我们既可以揭示塑造自己身体表征的因素，也可以帮助开发这项重要的新技术。在这项资助中，我们将研究虚拟身体功能在我们如何理解我们自己的身体和接受新的虚拟身体中的作用。此外，我们还测试了孩子们在学习拥有和控制新身体方面是否表现出了更高的能力。我们最终将这项工作与教育联系起来，在课堂环境中测试这种虚拟体验的应用效益。这个范围广泛的项目，解决了关于身体自我的基本问题，涵盖了感觉、运动、认知和发展心理学，以及计算机科学。我们期望它会引起相应广泛的学术受众的兴趣，其结果将在国际会议和高质量的学术期刊上传播。通过一系列的研究，我们将测试成人和儿童是否能接受一个功能与他们自己不同的虚拟身体（例如，一只手可以伸得比自己更远；一个身体可以让他们挤过狭窄的缝隙）。这些功能将由我们的计算机科学团队精心开发；它们对身体所有权和控制的影响将由我们的心理学团队进行严格的实验测试。我们将研究两个重要的和互补的背景下，手动（手）控制和全身控制。使用各种各样的测量，包括自我报告，心理生理学和动作捕捉，我们将测量用户如何学习控制功能增强的虚拟身体，并感受到对它们的所有权感。我们将研究如何训练用户接受虚拟身体作为他们自己的，无论是在一个单一的实验会议和在一个星期的较长时期。通过跨年龄组的测试，我们将验证与成人相比，儿童在自己的身体呈现方面存在实质性可塑性的预测，这扩大了他们可以学习拥有和控制的虚拟身体的范围。在最后一项研究中，我们将检查我们开发的功能增强的身体的教育效益，测试它们是否对学童的空间信息产生特定的学习收益。该项目是一个独特的跨学科的努力，结合理论和技术专长，以产生尖端的工作。PI博士考伊（达勒姆心理学）是一位心理学家，他开创了儿童身体表征和运动发展的实验研究。共同创办人Gillies博士及Pan博士（Goldsmiths Computer Science）是具身虚拟实境的专家。由学术界人士（如Mel Slater教授）和工业界人士（如BBC的员工；微软研究院）组成的用户组将确保项目产生最大的社会和经济影响。社会和经济影响是贯穿整个项目的重要环节。我们的教育实验检验了VR是否能特别帮助学童学习空间信息，这是STEM的一项核心技能。这项工作为该技术在教育和技能培训方面的未来发展提供了一个平台。通过我们由学术界和工业界（如BBC，微软）的VR专家组成的用户组，我们将向VR开发者受众传达我们的工作，为设计虚拟现实游戏提供原则，最大限度地发挥虚拟现实在所有年龄段用户群体中的潜力。

Our body structures our psychological experience. Recent work suggests that the sense of bodily self is flexible. This is especially apparent in children, whose bodies are growing and sensory systems changing. What shapes own-body representation, and how flexible is it? This can be answered using new virtual reality approaches where we control a moving virtual body, seen from a first-person perspective. These virtual bodies may be functionally different to one's own - able to reach further, fit through narrow spaces, or even fly. By measuring how changes to the virtual body's function impact upon body ownership and control, we can both reveal the factors which shape own-body representation and help develop this important new technology. In this grant we will study the role of virtual body function in how we understand our own bodies and accept new virtual bodies. Further, we test whether children show increased aptitude for learning to own and control new bodies. We finally bridge this work to education, testing the applied benefits of such virtual experiences in a classroom setting. This wide-ranging project, addressing fundamental questions about the bodily self, spans sensory, motor, cognitive and developmental Psychology, as well as Computer Science. We expect it to be of interest to a correspondingly broad academic audience, with results disseminated in international conferences and high quality academic journals.Across a series of studies, we will test whether adults and children can accept a virtual body whose function is different to their own (e.g. a hand which reaches further than their own; a body which allows them to squeeze through narrow gaps). These functions will be carefully developed by our Computer Science team; their impacts upon body ownership and control will be rigorously experimentally tested by our Psychology team. We will examine the two important and complementary contexts of manual (hand) control and whole-body control. Using a wide variety of measures including self-report, psychophysiology, and motion capture, we will measure how well users can learn both to control functionally augmented virtual bodies, and to feel a sense of ownership over them. We will examine how users can be trained to accept a virtual body as their own, both over a single experimental session and over a longer period of a week. By testing across age groups, we will test the prediction that there is substantial plasticity in own-body presentation in children compared to adults, which widens the range of virtual bodies they can learn to own and control. In a final study, we will examine the educational benefits of the functionally-enhanced bodies we develop, testing whether they produce specific learning gains for spatial information in schoolchildren.The project is a unique cross-disciplinary effort, incorporating theoretical and technical expertise to produce cutting-edge work. PI Dr Cowie (Durham Psychology), is a Psychologist who has pioneered experimental studies of children's body representation and motor development. Co-I's Dr Gillies and Dr Pan (Goldsmiths Computer Science) are experts on embodied virtual reality. A User group including individuals from academia (e.g. Prof. Mel Slater) and industry (e.g. staff in BBC; Microsoft Research) will ensure that the project has maximum societal and economic impact. Social and economic impact is an important seam running through the project. Our educational experiment examines whether VR can specifically help schoolchildren to learn spatial information, a core STEM skill. This work provides a platform for future developments of this technology for education and skill training. Through our User Group of VR experts from academia and industry (e.g. BBC, Microsoft), we will communicate our work to the VR developer audience, providing principles for designing virtual reality games which maximise the potential of embodied virtual reality in user groups of all ages.