Changes in bodily awareness induced by immersive virtual reality

The recent proliferation of virtual reality technology has attracted the in terest of social scientists who study human behavior and perceptual experie nce. Such computer simulations are able to present technologically rendered environments, where the properties of the physical world are approximated or manipulated to varying degrees. The present study sought to investigate the influence of an immersive virtual experience on the perceptual awarenes s of the body. A body awareness questionnaire was administered to users of a desktop and an immersive implementation of a virtual. environment (the Ci tyscape). The results indicated a significant main effect for the mode of p resentation (i.e., desktop or immersive), no gender effects, and no interac tion effect between gender and the mode of presentation. Test of between-su bjects effects for the mode of presentation found significant differences o n a number of body awareness dimensions. The desktop group were found to ex perience higher levels of skin, muscular, and cardiovascular awareness, whi le the immersive group experienced higher levels of body boundary ambiguity and aural awareness.