Does Random Movements mean Random Results? Why Asynchrony in Experiments on Body Ownership does not Work as Intended
IT University of Copenhagen
How they used Delve
Researchers at the IT University of Copenhagen and the University of Copenhagen used Delve for inductive coding of think-aloud and interview transcripts from 16 participants in a VR body-ownership experiment, generating codes separately per experimental condition and clustering them into themes to explain why asynchronous virtual bodies behave differently from theory.
“The software Delve was used for inductive coding of the think-aloud and interview transcripts.”
- Field
- Virtual reality / sense of body ownership and embodiment
- Data
- Think-aloud reports and post-hoc semi-structured interviews from 16 VR-naive participants (seven male, nine female, mean age 33.8) who each experienced four asynchrony conditions in a Meta Quest 3 headset
- Approach
- Laboratory think-aloud study with post-hoc semi-structured interviews, analysed by bottom-up inductive coding: transcripts split by experimental condition so codes were generated per condition, identically named where they recurred, duplicate codes merged, then open coding followed by clustering into broader themes and comparison across conditions
- Data types
- Interviews, Observation
Abstract
Effects of embodying virtual avatars are routinely validated experimentally by comparing synchronous and asynchronous movements between virtual and real bodies. This experimental paradigm, however, lacks justification, validation, and standardization. Asynchrony is implemented in numerous ways, such as through delayed, dislocated, or prerecorded movements, and these may impact embodiment and user experience distinctively. An online study ($N = 202$) revealed that variations of asynchrony cause disparate responses to embodiment and user experience, with prerecorded movements distorting embodiment the most. A think-aloud study ($N = 16$) revealed that asynchronous conditions lead to peculiar and oftentimes negative experiences. Furthermore, asynchronous conditions in some cases maintain, rather than break the body ownership illusion, as participants imitate the virtual body. Our results show that asynchrony in experiments on embodiment entails profound validity issues and should therefore be used with caution.
Citation
Olga Iarygina, Kasper Hornbæk, Aske Mottelson (2025). Does Random Movements mean Random Results? Why Asynchrony in Experiments on Body Ownership does not Work as Intended. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713506