Feeling Across the Distance: The Interplay of Motor and Empathic Processes with Virtual Humans

Immersive technologies enable increasingly frequent and complex interactions with "Virtual Humans" (VHs), now endowed with anthropomorphic behaviour and appearance. Therefore, it is important to explore the psychological mechanisms underlying social interaction between people and VHs. To this end, we investigated whether motor simulation mechanisms influence localization of stimuli at near (peripersonal) or far (extrapersonal) distances from a VH and whether empathic traits correlate with the task. In an immersive virtual reality environment, participants had to determine the position (right/left) of an object relative to VHs who could have their arms blocked (motor interference) or free (full motor availability) and could appear near or far from participants. Furthermore, we assessed the participants’ empathic traits using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). We hypothesized that motor interference should slow down the localization of objects in peripersonal space, i.e., a space of action and defence. An association between empathic traits and spatial performance was expected, especially in extrapersonal space. The results confirmed these hypotheses, showing a deep engagement with the VHs based on motor simulation in peripersonal space and associated to the empathic tendency to identify with a fictitious character in extrapersonal space.