The Effect of Human Avatars' Facial Similarity on Users' Sense of Co-presence

The present study used both self-report and electroencephalogram (EEG) measures and explored if users' sense of co-presence with communication counterparts' avatars would be salient when their own faces are morphed with the avatars' faces. Thirty-four undergraduate female students participated in an EEG/ERPbased experiment. In the experiment, each of the subjects who were assigned to either the morphed face condition or the non-morphed condition was exposed to the image presentation of avatar. The self-report data analyses indicated that the subjects felt significantly higher senses of being together with the counterparts whose faces were morphed with their own faces than those whose faces were not morphed. Further, the EEG/ERP data analyses demonstrated that the subjects paid much more attention to the counterparts whose faces were morphed than those who were not morphed.