This volume presents a line of original experimental studies on the bodily self, investigating where people locate themselves in their bodies and how accurate they are at localizing their body parts. So far, it was not well known whether people locate themselves in one or more specific regions of their bodies. On the other hand, some systematic distortions in indicating bodily locations were already documented. In the present studies, participants were therefore asked to indicate their self-locations, as well as the locations of several of their body parts, using a self-directed, first-person perspective pointing paradigm in various virtual reality (VR) setups (different head-mounted displays and a large-screen immersive display). Overall, participants were found to locate themselves mainly in the (upper) face and the (upper) torso. However, striking differences in self-localization were found when testing in different VR setups. Upon further investigation, these differences were found to be foremost due to inaccuracies in body part localization. When taking these inaccuracies into account, differences between setups—and also with self-localization outside of VR—largely disappear. Another striking finding was that providing participants—in between pointing phases—with information about their bodies in the form of a real-time animated self-avatar, did not make them more accurate at locating their own body parts. While manipulating their viewpoint to chest-height of their self-avatar did shift the afterwards indicated locations of their own body parts upwards, towards where they were seen on the avatar. Potential explanations for the various new findings, also from tasks outside of VR, are discussed. Taken together, this volume suggests a differential involvement of multi-sensory information processing in experienced self-location within the body and the ability to locate body parts. Self-localization seems to be less flexible, possibly because it is strongly grounded in the 'bodily senses', while body part localization appears more adaptable to the manipulation of sensory stimuli, at least in the visual modality.

Humans always wanted to go faster and higher than their own legs could carry them. This led them to invent numerous types of vehicles to move fast over land, water and air. As training how to handle such vehicles and testing new developments can be dangerous and costly, vehicle motion simulators were invented. Motion-based simulators in particular, combine visual and physical motion cues to provide occupants with a feeling of being in the real vehicle. While visual cues are generally not limited in amplitude, physical cues certainly are, due to the limited simulator motion space. A motion cueing algorithm (MCA) is used to map the vehicle motions onto the simulator motion space. This mapping inherently creates mismatches between the visual and physical motion cues. Due to imperfections in the human perceptual system, not all visual/physical cueing mismatches are perceived. However, if a mismatch is perceived, it can impair the simulation realism and even cause simulator sickness. For MCA design, a good understanding of when mismatches are perceived, and ways to prevent these from occurring, are therefore essential. In this thesis a data-driven approach, using continuous subjective measures of the time-varying Perceived Motion Incongruence (PMI), is adopted. PMI in this case refers to the effect that perceived mismatches between visual and physical motion cues have on the resulting simulator realism. The main goal of this thesis was to develop an MCA-independent off-line prediction method for time-varying PMI during vehicle motion simulation, with the aim of improving motion cueing quality. To this end, a complete roadmap, describing how to measure and model PMI and how to apply such models to predict and minimize PMI in motion simulations is presented. Results from several human-in-the-loop experiments are used to demonstrate the potential of this novel approach.

Despite widespread interest in virtual reality, research and development efforts in synthetic environments (SE)â€"the field encompassing virtual environments, teleoperation, and hybridsâ€"have remained fragmented. Virtual Reality is the first integrated treatment of the topic, presenting current knowledge along with thought-provoking vignettes about a future where SE is commonplace. This volume discusses all aspects of creating a system that will allow human operators to see, hear, smell, taste, move about, give commands, respond to conditions, and manipulate objects effectively in a real or virtual environment. The committee of computer scientists, engineers, and psychologists on the leading edge of SE development explores the potential applications of SE in the areas of manufacturing, medicine, education, training, scientific visualization, and teleoperation in hazardous environments. The committee also offers recommendations for development of improved SE technology, needed studies of human behavior and evaluation of SE systems, and government policy and infrastructure.

This collection is essential reading for anyone working in experimental philosophy today, bringing together established and emerging research leaders from several areas of experimental philosophy to explore how new empirical methods can contribute to philosophical debates. Each chapter presents one or several methods new to experimental philosophy, demonstrating their application in a key area of philosophy and discussing their strengths and limitations. Methods covered include eye tracking, virtual reality technology, neuroimaging, statistical learning, and experimental economics as well as corpus linguistics, visualization techniques and data and text mining. Contributors explore their use in moral philosophy and moral psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the history of ideas and offer an accessible overview of exciting innovations.

Recently, there have been a number of advances in technology, including in mobile devices, globalization of companies, display technologies and healthcare, all of which require significant input and evaluation from human factors specialists. Accordingly, this textbook has been completely updated, with some chapters folded into other chapters and new chapters added where needed. The text continues to fill the need for a textbook that bridges the gap between the conceptual and empirical foundations of the field.

Cognitive computing simulates human thought processes with self-learning algorithms that utilize data mining, pattern recognition, and natural language processing. The integration of deep learning improves the performance of Cognitive computing systems in many applications, helping in utilizing heterogeneous data sets and generating meaningful insights.

The interactive computer-generated world of virtual reality has been successful in treating phobias and other anxiety-related conditions, in part because of its distinct advantages over traditional in vivo exposure. Yet many clinicians still think of VR technology as it was in the 1990s–bulky, costly, technically difficult–with little knowledge of its evolution toward more modern, evidence-based, practice-friendly treatment. These updates, and their clinical usefulness, are the subject of Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders, a timely guidebook geared toward integrating up-to-date VR methods into everyday practice. Introductory material covers key virtual reality concepts, provides a brief history of VR as used in therapy for anxiety disorders, addresses the concept of presence, and explains the side effects, known as cybersickness, that affect a small percentage of clients. Chapters in the book's main section detail current techniques and review study findings for using VR in the treatment of: · Claustrophobia. · Panic disorder, agoraphobia, and driving phobia. · Acrophobia and aviophobia. · Arachnophobia. · Social phobia. · Generalized anxiety disorder and OCD. · PTSD. · Plus clinical guidelines for establishing a VR clinic. An in-depth framework for effective (and cost-effective) therapeutic innovations for entrenched problems, Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders will find an engaged audience among psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and mental health counselors.eractive