Self-observation of a virtual body-double engaged in social interaction reduces persecutory thoughts

The proportion of the population who experience persecutory thoughts is 10–15%. People then engage in safety-seeking behaviours, typically avoiding social interactions, which prevents disconfirmatory experiences and hence paranoia persists. Here we show that persecutory thoughts can be reduced if prior to engaging in social interaction in VR participants first see their virtual body-double doing so. Thirty non-clinical participants were recruited to take part in a study, where they were embodied in a virtual body that closely resembled themselves, and asked to interact with members of a crowd. In the Random condition (n = 15) they observed their body-double wandering around but not engaging with the crowd. In the Targeted condition the body-double correctly interacted with members of the crowd. The Green Paranoid Thoughts Scale was measured 1 week before and 1 week after the exposure and decreased only for those in the Targeted condition. The results suggest that the observation of the body-double correctly carrying out a social interaction task in VR may lead to anxiety-reducing mental rehearsal for interaction thus overcoming safety behaviours. The results also extend knowledge of the effects of vicarious agency, suggesting that identification with the actions of body-double can influence subsequent psychological state.

Research on Visual Awareness Interface Design Based on Human-Computer Interaction Task

By using the form and specific process of human-computer interaction to comprehensively understand and judge whether users can accurately and quickly recognize products, it has a positive effect on the current visual and perceptual interface design work. On the basis of understanding the achievements of current related scientific research projects, this paper analyzes how to construct and design a new visual and perceptual interface based on human-computer interaction tasks by studying the main factors that affect users’ cognition of visual information interface.

A Modified Trier Social Stress Test to Investigate Social Anxiety using Videoconferencing Software: A Proof-of-Concept study

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders and can be significantly disabling. New treatments are needed as the remission rate for SAD is the lowest of all the anxiety disorders. Experimental medicine models, in which features resembling a clinical disorder are experimentally induced, can be a cost-effective and timely approach to explore potential novel treatments for psychiatric disorders. One such model is the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), which induces social-evaluative threat and subsequent stress responses in participants. However, following the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, there is a need to develop protocols that can be carried out remotely. We developed a novel modified TSST to investigate SAD that can be carried out entirely online (the Internet-based Trier Stress test for Social Anxiety Disorder; iTSSAD). Our protocol involves a naturalistic social interaction task to explore social anxiety symptoms. The observing panel was also artificial which allows the entire protocol to be carried out by a single investigator, reducing costs and improving internal reliability. The iTSSAD induced significant subjective anxiety and reduced positive affect (F’s > 4.41, p’s < 0.02). Further, social anxiety symptoms correlated with anxiety during the social interaction task (r = 0.65, p = 0.0032). This protocol needs further validation with physiological measures. The iTSSAD is a new tool for researchers to investigate mechanisms underlying social anxiety disorder.

Mental Workload of Local vs Remote Operator in Human-Machine Interaction Case Study

Since late 2019, a novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread globally. As a result, businesses were forced to send their workforce into remote working, wherever possible. While research in this area has seen an increase in studying and developing technologies that allow and support such remote working style, not every sector is currently prepared for such a transition. Especially the manufacturing sector has faced challenges in this regard. In this paper, the mental workload of two groups of participants is studied during a human-robot interaction task. Participants were asked to bring a robotised cell used in a dispensing task to full production by tuning system parameters. After the experiment, a self-assessment of the participants’ perceived mental workload using the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) was used. The results show that remote participants tend to have lower perceived workload compared to the local participants.

Abstract concepts in interaction: the need of others when guessing abstract concepts smooths dyadic motor interactions

concepts (ACs, e.g. ‘justice’) are more complex compared with concrete concepts (CCs) (e.g. ‘table’). Indeed, they do not possess a single object as a referent, they assemble quite heterogeneous members and they are more detached from exteroceptive and more grounded in interoceptive experience. Recent views have hypothesized that interpersonal communication is particularly crucial to acquire and use ACs. The current study investigates the reliance of ACs/CCs representation on interpersonal behaviour. We asked participants to perform a motor interaction task with two avatars who embodied two real confederates. Before and after the motor interaction task, the two confederates provided participants with hints in a concept guessing task associated with visual stimuli: one helped in guessing ACs and the other, CCs. A control study we performed both with the materials employed in the main experiment and with other materials, confirmed that associating verbal concepts with visual images was more difficult with ACs than with CCs. Consistently, the results of the main experiment showed that participants asked for more hints with ACs than CCs and were more synchronous when interacting with the avatar corresponding to the AC's confederate. The results highlight an important role of sociality in grounding ACs.

How the Discrepancy Between Prior Expectations and New Information Influences Expectation Updating in Depression—The Greater, the Better?

Previous research on expectation updating in relation to psychopathology used to treat expectation-confirming information and expectation-disconfirming information as binary concepts. Here, we varied the extent to which new information deviates from prior expectations and examined its influence on expectation adjustment in both a false-feedback task (Study 1; N = 379) and a social-interaction task (Study 2; N = 292). Unlike traditional learning models, we hypothesized a tipping point in which the discrepancy between expectation and outcome becomes so large that new information is perceived as lacking credibility, thus entailing little updating of expectations. Consistent with the hypothesized tipping point, new information was deemed most valid if it was moderately positive. Moreover, descriptively, expectation update was largest for moderate expectation violations, but this effect was small (Study 2) or even nonsignificant (Study 1). The findings question the assumption of traditional learning models that the larger the prediction error, the larger the update.

Midfrontal theta tACS facilitates motor coordination in dyadic human-avatar motor interactions

Synchronous interpersonal motor interactions require moment-to-moment predictions and proactive monitoring of the partner's actions. Neurophysiologically, this is highlighted by an enhancement of midfrontal theta activity. In the present study we explored the causal role of midfrontal theta for interpersonal motor interactions employing transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). We implemented a realistic human-avatar interaction task in immersive virtual reality (IVR) where participants controlled a virtual arm and hand to press a button synchronously with a virtual partner. Participants completed the task while receiving theta (Experiment 1) or beta (control frequency, Experiment 2) EEG-informed tACS over the frontal midline, as well as sham stimulation as a control. Results showed that frontal theta tACS significantly improved behavioural performance (by reducing interpersonal asynchrony) and participants' motor strategies (by increasing movement times and reducing reaction times), while beta tACS had no effect on these measures. These results suggest that theta tACS over frontal areas facilitates action monitoring and motor abilities supporting interpersonal interactions.

A New Statistical Approach for fNIRS Hyperscanning to Predict Brain Activity of Preschoolers’ Using Teacher’s

Hyperscanning studies using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) have been performed to understand the neural mechanisms underlying human-human interactions. In this study, we propose a novel methodological approach that is developed for fNIRS multi-brain analysis. Our method uses support vector regression (SVR) to predict one brain activity time series using another as the predictor. We applied the proposed methodology to explore the teacher-student interaction, which plays a critical role in the formal learning process. In an illustrative application, we collected fNIRS data of the teacher and preschoolers’ dyads performing an interaction task. The teacher explained to the child how to add two numbers in the context of a game. The Prefrontal cortex and temporal-parietal junction of both teacher and student were recorded. A multivariate regression model was built for each channel in each dyad, with the student’s signal as the response variable and the teacher’s ones as the predictors. We compared the predictions of SVR with the conventional ordinary least square (OLS) predictor. The results predicted by the SVR model were statistically significantly correlated with the actual test data at least one channel-pair for all dyads. Overall, 29/90 channel-pairs across the five dyads (18 channels 5 dyads = 90 channel-pairs) presented significant signal predictions withthe SVR approach. The conventional OLS resulted in only 4 out of 90 valid predictions. These results demonstrated that the SVR could be used to perform channel-wise predictions across individuals, and the teachers’ cortical activity can be used to predict the student brain hemodynamic response.

What’s limbs got to do with it? Real-world movement correlates with feelings of ownership over virtual arms during object interactions in virtual reality

Humans will initially move awkwardly so that the end-state of their movement is comfortable. But, what is comfortable? We might assume it refers to a particular physical body posture, however, humans have been shown to move a computer cursor on a screen with an out-of-sight hand less efficiently (curved) such that the visual representation appears more efficient (straight). This suggests that movement plans are made in large part to satisfy the demands of their visual appearance, rather than their physical movement properties. So, what determines if a body movement is comfortable—how it feels or how it looks? We translated an object-interaction task from the real-world into immersive virtual reality (IVR) to dissociate a movement from its visual appearance. Participants completed at least 20 trials in two conditions: Controllers—where participants saw a visual representation of the hand-held controllers and Arms—where they saw a set of virtual limbs. We found participants seeing virtual limbs moved in a less biomechanically efficient manner to make the limbs look similar to if they were interacting with a real-world object. These movement changes correlated with an increase in self-reported feelings of ownership over the limbs as compared to the controllers. Overall this suggests we plan our movements to provide optimal visual feedback, even at the cost of being less efficient. Moreover, we speculate that a detailed measurement of how people move in IVR may provide a new tool for assessing their degree of embodiment. There is something about seeing a set of limbs in front of you, doing your actions, that affects your moving, and in essence, your thinking.