Visual Self-Motion Feedback Affects the Sense of Self in Virtual Reality

We assessed how self-motion affects the visual representation of the self. We constructed a novel virtual-reality experiment that systematically varied an avatar's motion and also biological sex. Participants were presented with pairs of avatars that visually represented the participant ('self-avatar'), or another person ('opposite avatar'). Avatar motion either corresponded with the participant's motion, or was decoupled from the participant's motion. The results show that participants identified with (i) 'self-avatars' over 'opposite-avatars', (ii) avatars moving congruently with self-motion over incongruent motion, and importantly (iii) with the 'opposite avatar' over the 'self-avatar' when the opposite avatar's motion was congruent with self-motion. Our results suggest that both self-motion and biological sex are relevant to the body schema and body image and that congruent bottom-up visual feedback of self-motion is particularly important for the sense of self and capable of overriding top-down self-identification factors such as biological sex.