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Updated: Jan 12, 2026

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation
Published on: March 1, 2017
Self-dialogue with age-congruent versus age-incongruent avatars in immersive virtual reality
Diana C G Mendes1,2, Ana Fonseca3, Mónica S Cameirão4,5
1Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia & NOVA LINCS, Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal. diana.mendes@nlincs.uma.pt.
Abstract:
Perspective-taking in virtual reality has been exploited in different areas, including using avatars for self-dialogue. We explore the effect of performing self-dialogue in VR, alternating between a non-lookalike 'self' and an age-congruent or age-incongruent 'other'. We used an independent-sample design, with 28 females aged 18-35, starting a conversation in their 'self' avatar while describing a stressful daily-life problem, swapping immediately after with the 'other' (either young or mature-looking) avatar to listen and respond. Results showed that the importance of the change regarding their problem immediately after the experiment was significantly higher for the mature avatar condition (p = 0.01), an effect not found at follow-up. Further, there is a trend towards specific factors of embodiment (e.g., self-recognition and body recognition) being related to understanding their problem better or how helpful the exercise was perceived. To conclude, while the mature avatar showed a short-term advantage, long-term effects were not observed. Future studies with tighter controls are warranted.
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