Walking with avatars: Gait-related visual information for following a virtual leader

Laurentius A Meerhoff; Harjo J De Poel; Tim W D Jowett; Chris Button

doi:10.1016/j.humov.2019.04.003

Walking with avatars: Gait-related visual information for following a virtual leader

Hum Mov Sci. 2019 Aug:66:173-185. doi: 10.1016/j.humov.2019.04.003. Epub 2019 Apr 25.

Authors

Laurentius A Meerhoff¹, Harjo J De Poel², Tim W D Jowett³, Chris Button⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Science, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. Electronic address: rensmeerhoff@gmail.com.
² Center for Human Movement Sciences, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, PO Box 196, 9700 AD Groningen, the Netherlands.
³ Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.
⁴ School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Science, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.

PMID: 31029839
DOI: 10.1016/j.humov.2019.04.003

Abstract

Dynamic situations, such as interactive sports or walking on a busy street, impose high demands on a person's ability to interact with (others in) its environment (i.e., 'interact-ability'). The current study examined how distance regulation, a fundamental component of these interactions, is mediated by different sources of visual information. Participants were presented with a back and forwards moving virtual leader, which they had to follow by walking back and forwards themselves. We presented the leader in several appearances that differed in the presence of segmental (i.e., relative movements of body segments), cadence-related (i.e., sway and bounce), and global (i.e., optical expansion-compression) information. Results indicated that removing segmental motion information from the virtual leader significantly deteriorated both temporal synchronization and spatial accuracy of the follower to the leader, especially when the movement path of the leader was less regular/predictable. However, no difference was found between cadence-related and global motion information appearances. We argue that regulating distance with others effectively requires a versatile attunement to segmental and global motion information depending on the specific task demands. The results further support the notion that detection of especially segmental information allows for more timely 'anticipatory' tuning to another person's locomotor movements and intentions.

Keywords: Distance-regulation; Dynamical systems; Ecological psychology; Interpersonal coordination; Locomotion.