Virtual environments, such as online games and web-based chat rooms, increasingly allow us to alter our digital self-representations dramatically and easily. But as we change our self-representations, do our self-representations change our behavior in turn? In 2 experimental studies, we explore the hypothesis that an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them—a process we term the Proteus Effect. In the first study, participants assigned to more attractive avatars in immersive virtual environments were more intimate with confederates in a self-disclosure and interpersonal distance task than participants assigned to less attractive avatars. In our second study, participants assigned taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task than participants assigned shorter avatars. We discuss the implications of the Proteus Effect with regards to social interactions in online environments.

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The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior

Authoritative and accessible, this book introduces the theory and practice of teaching writing to students of EFL/ESL learners While assuming no specialist knowledge, Ken Hyland systematically sets out the key issues of course design, lesson planning, texts and materials, tasks, feedback and assessment and how current research can inform classroom practice This second edition is completely revised to include up-to-date work on automated feedback, plagiarism, social media, Virtual Learning Environments and teacher workload issues It takes the clear stance that student writers not only need realistic strategies for drafting and revising, but also a clear understanding of genre to structure their writing experiences according to the expectations of particular communities of readers and the constraints of particular contexts Review exercises, reflection questions, plentiful examples and a new extensive glossary make the book invaluable to both prospective and practicing teachers alike

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Second Language Writing

Online survey data were collected from 30,000 users of Massively Multi-User On-line Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) over a three year period to explore users' demographics, motivations, and derived experiences. Not only do MMORPGs appeal to a broad age range (Mage = 26.57, range = 11-68), but the appeal is strong (on average 22 hours of usage per week) across users of all ages (r = -.04). An exploratory factor analysis revealed a five factor model of user motivations-- Achievement, Relationship, Immersion, Escapism, and Manipulation--illustrating the multifaceted appeal of these online environments. Male players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Achievement and Manipulation factors, while female players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Relationship factor. Also, the data indicated that users derived meaningful relationships and salient emotional experiences, as well as real-life leadership skills from these virtual environments. MMORPGs are not simply a pastime for teenagers, but a valuable research venue and platform where millions of users interact and collaborate using real-time 3D avatars on a daily basis.

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The demographics, motivations, and derived experiences of users of massively multi-user online graphical environments

Real-time control of three-dimensional avatars is an important problem in the context of computer games and virtual environments. Avatar animation and control is difficult, however, because a large repertoire of avatar behaviors must be made available, and the user must be able to select from this set of behaviors, possibly with a low-dimensional input device. One appealing approach to obtaining a rich set of avatar behaviors is to collect an extended, unlabeled sequence of motion data appropriate to the application. In this paper, we show that such a motion database can be preprocessed for flexibility in behavior and efficient search and exploited for real-time avatar control. Flexibility is created by identifying plausible transitions between motion segments, and efficient search through the resulting graph structure is obtained through clustering. Three interface techniques are demonstrated for controlling avatar motion using this data structure: the user selects from a set of available choices, sketches a path through an environment, or acts out a desired motion in front of a video camera. We demonstrate the flexibility of the approach through four different applications and compare the avatar motion to directly recorded human motion.

Interactive control of avatars animated with human motion data

Investigating virtual environments has become an increasingly interesting research topic for engineers, computer and cognitive scientists, and psychologists. Although there have been several recent studies focused on the development of multimodal virtual environments (VEs) to study human-machine interactions, less attention has been paid to human-human and human-machine interactions in shared virtual environments (SVEs), and to our knowledge, no attention paid at all to what extent the addition of haptic communication between people would contribute to the shared experience. We have developed a multimodal shared virtual environment and performed a set of experiments with human subjects to study the role of haptic feedback in collaborative tasks and whether haptic communication through force feedback can facilitate a sense of being and collaborating with a remote partner. The study concerns a scenario where two participants at remote sites must cooperate to perform a joint task in an SVE. The goals of the study are (1) to assess the impact of force feedback on task performance, (2) to better understand the role of haptic communication in human-human interactions, (3) to study the impact of touch on the subjective sense of collaborating with a human as reported by the participants based on what they could see and feel, and (4) to investigate if gender, personality, or emotional experiences of users can affect haptic communication in SVEs. The outcomes of this research can have a powerful impact on the development of next-generation human-computer interfaces and network protocols that integrate touch and force feedback technology into the internet, development of protocols and techniques for collaborative teleoperation such as hazardous material removal, space station.

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An experimental study on the role of touch in shared virtual environments

In this paper we present a virtual tennis game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virtual humans and body deformations, also showing the real-time animation and rendering aspects of the avatars. We focus on the animation of the virtual tennis ball and the behavior of a synthetic, autonomous referee who judges the tennis games. The networked, collaborative, virtual environment system is described with special reference to its interfaces to driver programs. We also mention the virtual reality (VR) devices that are used to merge the interactive players into the virtual tennis environment, together with the equipment and technologies employed for this exciting experience. We conclude with remarks on personal experiences during the game and on future research topics to improve parts of the presented system.

Anyone for Tennis

COVEN (Collaborative Virtual Environments) is a European project that seeks to develop a comprehensive approach to the issues in the development of collaborative virtual environment (CVE) technology. COVEN brings together twelve academic and industrial partners with a wide range of expertise in CSCW, networked VR, computer graphics, human factors, HCI, and telecommunications infrastructures. After two years of work, we are presenting the main features of our approach and results, our driving applications, the main components of our technical investigations, and our experimental activities. With different citizen and professional application scenarios as driving forces, COVEN is exploring the requirements and supporting techniques for collaborative interaction in scalable CVEs. Technical results are being integrated in an enriched networked VR platform based on the dVS and DIVE systems. Taking advantage of a dedicated Europe-wide ISDN and ATM network infrastructure, a large component of the project is a trial and experimentation activity that should allow a comprehensive understanding of the network requirements of these systems as well as their usability issues and human factors aspects.

The COVEN Project: Exploring Applicative, Technical, and Usage Dimensions of Collaborative Virtual Environments

The coven project: exploring applicative

_knowscape builds new networked communities of knowledge. It explores original forms of online [user's] representation and builds new kinds of virtual world that carry on information.

_knowscape, a 3D multi-user experimental web browser

Introduction _knowscape mobile is an architectural space associating territories of data and physical space, linking architecture, knowledge and browsing. Initially _knowscape has been conceived as an alternative multi-user browser using data *tracking* and *profiling* techniques to question, to reverse them, so to finally produce open data territories, shared browsing experiences and *open users' profiles*. This first version of _knowscape was presented in 2002 to Siggraph Web Graphics. For two years, _knowscape has evolved to become a mobile downloadable space: _knowscape mobile. It is now both a 3D multiuser experimental web browser, where all the online users can see each others, as well as a physically located installation.

Stéphane Carion

Papers

Anyone for Tennis

The COVEN Project: Exploring Applicative, Technical, and Usage Dimensions of Collaborative Virtual Environments

The coven project: exploring applicative

_knowscape, a 3D multi-user experimental web browser

_knowscape mobile, associating territory of data and physical space