The interactive effect of avatar visual fidelity and behavioral fidelity in the collaborative virtual reality environment on the perception of social interaction

Authors:
Samah Mansour;Mostafa El-Said;Carolyn Rude-Parkins;Jagadeesh Nandigam
Affiliations:
College of Education and Human Development, University of Louisville;School of Computing and Information Systems, Grand Valley State Univ.;College of Education and Human Development, University of Louisville;School of Computing and Information Systems, Grand Valley State Univ.
Venue:
ICCOM'06 Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Communications
Year:
2006

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Abstract

Collaboration is an important method for online student engagement. Currently employed communication media lack features that foster maximum perception of social interaction in e-learning. New technologies enable researchers and designers to test collaborative learning in the Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment (CVRE), an emerging tool with the potential to provide an interactive e-learning environment. The current study examined how the perception of social interaction in the CVRE is influenced by variations in how much the avatar resembles a human being in appearance and behavior. We measured the extent to which virtual representations were both perceived and treated as if they were human, via self-report questionnaire. Interactive effect for visual fidelity and behavioral fidelity of the avatar was found, suggesting that evaluating the effect of visual fidelity on social interaction without taking into consideration the behavioral fidelity of the avatar (and vice versa) can lead to misleading results.