The effect of avatar model in stepping off a ledge in an immersive virtual environment

Animated digital self-representations of the user in an immersive virtual environment, a self-avatar, have been shown to aid in perceptual judgments in the virtual environment and to provide critical information for people deciding what actions they can and cannot take. In this paper we explore whether the form of the self-avatar is important in providing this information. In particular, we vary the form of a self-avatar between having no self-avatar, a simple line-based skeleton avatar, or a full-body, gender-matched self-avatar and examine whether the form of the self-avatar affects peoples judgments in whether they could or could not step off of a virtual ledge. Our results replicate prior work that shows that having a self-avatar provides critical information for this judgment, but finds no difference in the form of the self-avatar having an effect on the judgment.