Stephan Streuber

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Applied Sciences Coburg

Virtual Reality (VR) has paved its way into experimental psychology due to its capacity to realistically simulate real-world experiences in a controlled way. Theoretically, this technology opens the possibility to conduct experiments anywhere in the world using consumer hardware (e.g. mobile-VR). This would allow researchers to access large scale,...

Virtual reality (VR) technologies are increasingly used in neuropsychological assessment of various cognitive functions. Compared to traditional laboratory studies, VR allows for a more natural environment and more complex task-related movements with a high degree of control over the environment. However, there are still few studies that transfer w...

Falls are a major health concern. Existing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality solutions for fall prevention aim to improve balance in dedicated training sessions. We propose a novel AR prototype as an assistive wearable device to improve balance and prevent falls in daily life. We use a custom head-mounted display toolkit to present augment...

Falls are a major health concern, especially for elderly people. Existing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) solutions for fall prevention aim to improve balance in dedicated training sessions. We propose a novel AR prototype as an assistive wearable device to improve balance and prevent falls in daily life. We use a custom head-mounte...

Sensory perturbations are a valuable tool to assess sensory integration mechanisms underlying balance. Implemented as systems-identification approaches, they can be used to quantitatively assess balance deficits and separate underlying causes. However, the experiments require controlled perturbations and sophisticated modeling and optimization tech...

Peripheral vision plays a significant role in human perception and orientation. However, its relevance for human-computer interaction, especially head-mounted displays, has not been fully explored yet. In the past, a few specialized appliances were developed to display visual cues in the periphery, each designed for a single specific use case only....

Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is an ancient meditation technique based on generating kind intentions, compassion, and wishes of well-being towards oneself and others, while visualizing the target individual those intentions are directed to. Regular LKM practice results in more positive emotions, reduction of stress and increase in emotional proc...

Immersive virtual reality technology (VR) still waits for its wide dissemination in research and psychotherapy of eating and weight disorders. Given the comparably high efforts in producing a VR setup, we outline that the technology’s breakthrough needs tailored exploitation of specific features of VR and user-centered design of setups. In this pap...

Virtual Reality (VR) provides new possibilities for modern knowledge work. However, the potential advantages of virtual work environments can only be used if it is feasible to work in them for an extended period of time. Until now, there are limited studies of long-term effects when working in VR. This paper addresses the need for understanding suc...

Virtual Reality (VR) provides new possibilities for modern knowledge work. However, the potential advantages of virtual work environments can only be used if it is feasible to work in them for an extended period of time. Until now, there are limited studies of long-term effects when working in VR. This paper addresses the need for understanding suc...

Sensory perturbations are a valuable tool to assess sensory integration mechanisms underlying balance. Implemented as systems-identification approaches, they can be used to quantitatively assess balance deficits and separate underlying causes. However, the experiments require controlled perturbations and sophisticated modeling and optimization tech...

Laboratory stressors are essential tools to study the human stress response. However, despite considerable progress in the development of stress induction procedures in recent years, the field is still missing standardization and the methods employed frequently require considerable personnel resources. Virtual reality (VR) offers flexible solutions...

Political elections have a profound impact on individuals and societies. Optimal voting is thought to be based on informed and deliberate decisions yet, it has been demonstrated that the outcomes of political elections are biased by the perception of candidates’ facial features and the stereotypical traits voters attribute to these. Interestingly,...

Individuals differ in their physiological responsiveness to stressful challenges, and stress potentiates the development of many diseases. Heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of cardiac vagal break, is emerging as a strong index of physiological stress vulnerability. Thus, it is important to develop tools that identify predictive markers of ind...

Virtual reality (VR) technology is commonly used in balance research due to its ability to simulate real world experiences under controlled experimental conditions. However, several studies reported considerable differences in balance behavior in real world environments as compared to virtual environments presented in a head mounted display. Most o...

The goal of new adaptive technologies is to allow humans to interact with technical devices, such as robots, in natural ways akin to human interaction. Essential for achieving this goal, is the understanding of the factors that support natural interaction. Here, we examined whether human motor control is linked to the visual appearance of the inter...

Virtual Reality experiences and games present believable virtual environments based on graphical quality, spatial audio, and interactivity. The interaction with in-game characters, controlled by computers (agents) or humans (avatars), is an important part of VR experiences. Pre-captured motion sequences increase the visual humanoid resemblance. How...

The creation or streaming of photo-realistic self-avatars is important for virtual reality applications that aim for perception and action to replicate real world experience. The appearance and recognition of a digital self-avatar may be especially important for applications related to telepresence, embodied virtual reality, or immersive games. We...

Previous literature suggests that a disturbed ability to accurately identify own body size may contribute to overweight. Here, we investigated the influence of personal body size, indexed by body mass index (BMI), on body size estimation in a non-clinical population of females varying in BMI. We attempted to disentangle general biases in body size...

This study uses novel biometric figure rating scales (FRS) spanning body mass index (BMI) 13.8 to 32.2 kg/m2 and BMI 18 to 42 kg/m2. The aims of the study were (i) to compare FRS body weight dissatisfaction and perceptual distortion of women with anorexia nervosa (AN) to a community sample; (ii) how FRS parameters are associated with questionnaire...

The previous body image literature has focused on how females perceive their body weight. We investigated potential gender differences in the use of visual cues (shape, texture) to estimate own body weight. A full-body scanner was used to capture each participant’s own body geometry and colour information and a set of nine personalized 3D virtual b...

Background Body image disturbance (BID) is a core symptom of anorexia nervosa (AN), but as yet distinctive features of BID are unknown. The present study aimed at disentangling perceptual and attitudinal components of BID in AN. Methods We investigated n = 24 women with AN and n = 24 controls. Based on a three-dimensional (3D) body scan, we create...

.

.

Brief verbal descriptions of people’s bodies (e.g., “curvy,” “long-legged”) can elicit vivid mental images. The ease with which these mental images are created belies the complexity of three-dimensional body shapes. We explored the relationship between body shapes and body descriptions and showed that a small number of words can be used to generate...

Previous research has suggested that own body size estimates are biased towards an average reference body (Cornelissen, Bester, Cairns, Tove´e Cornelissen, 2015). The role of personal body size in body size perception of others is still unclear. In this study, we tested healthy females varying in body mass index (BMI) to investigate whether persona...

Realistic, metrically accurate, 3D human avatars are useful for games, shopping, virtual reality, and health applications. Such avatars are not in wide use because solutions for creating them from high-end scanners, low-cost range cameras, and tailoring measurements all have limitations. Here we propose a simple solution and show that it is surpris...

Previous research has suggested that inaccuracies in own body size estimation can largely be explained by a known error in perceived magnitude, called contraction bias (Cornelissen, Bester, Cairns, Tovée Cornelissen, 2015). According to this, own body size estimation is biased towards an average reference body, such that individuals with a low body...

We investigated the influence of body shape and pose on the perception of physical strength and social power for male virtual characters. In the first experiment, participants judged the physical strength of varying body shapes, derived from a statistical 3D body model. Based on these ratings, we determined three body shapes (weak, average, and str...

Human body shape variations can be measured physically and described verbally (e.g., curvy, stocky), though little is known about the relationship between body shapes and descriptions. We examined this relationship by linking two similarity spaces: one created from body descriptions (descriptor space) and the other from full-body laser scans (shape...

How do we control our bodily movements when socially interacting with others? Research on online motor control provides evidence that task relevant visual information is used for guiding corrective movements of ongoing motor actions. In social interactions observers have been shown to use their own motor system for predicting the outcome of another...

Actions do not occur out of the blue. Rather, they are often a part of human interactions and are, therefore, embedded in an action sequence. Previous research on visual action recognition has primarily focused on elucidating the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms in the recognition of individual actions. Surprisingly, the social and temporal cont...

The social context in which an action is embedded provides important information for the interpretation of an action. Is this social context integrated during the visual recognition of an action? We used a behavioural visual adaptation paradigm to address this question and measured participants' perceptual bias of a test action after they were adap...

Action recognition is critical for successful human interaction. Previous research highlighted the importance of the motor system to visual action recognition. Little is known about the visual tuning properties of processes involved in action recognition. Here we examined the visual tuning properties of processes involved in action recognition by m...

Theories of social interaction (i.e., common coding theory) suggest that visual information about the interaction partner is critical for successful interpersonal action coordination. Seeing the interaction partner allows an observer to understand and predict the interaction partner's behavior. However, it is unknown which of the many sources of vi...

Humans have been shown to perceive and perform actions differently in immersive virtual environments (VEs) as compared to the real world. Immersive VEs often lack the presence of virtual characters; users are rarely presented with a representation of their own body and have little to no experience with other human avatars/characters. However, virtu...

Social context modulates action kinematics. Less is known about whether social context also affects the use of task relevant visual information. We tested this hypothesis by examining whether the instruction to play table tennis competitively or cooperatively affected the kind of visual cues necessary for successful table tennis performance. In two...

The goal of the Turtle surf project described in this tech-note is to design, implement and evaluate a multimodal installation that should provide a good user experience in a virtual 3D world. For this purpose we combine audio-visual media forms and different types of haptic/tactile feedback. For the latter, we focus on the application of vibration...

A plausible assumption is that self-avatars increase the realism of immersive virtual environments (VEs), because self-avatars provide the user with a visual representation of his/her own body. Consequently having a self-avatar might lead to more realistic human behavior in VEs. To test this hypothesis we compared human behavior in VE with and with...

Vection refers to illusion of self motion in stationary obervers usually by means of moving visual stimuli [Fischer and Kornmüller 1930]. Linear vection naturally occurs when seated in a train and observing another train on an adjacent track start moving. The very compelling but brief illusion happens as observers are not paying particular attentio...

The aim of this experiment was to determine to which extent humans optimize their walking behavior in different conditions while navigating in a virtual maze. In two conditions participants either walked individually or jointly connected - carrying a physical stretcher. The results showed that an extra effort due to the task-required cooperation wa...

Vection refers to illusion of self motion in stationary obervers usually by means of moving visual stimuli [Fischer and Kornmüller 1930]. Linear vection naturally occurs when seated in a train and observing another train on an adjacent track start moving. The very compelling but brief illusion happens as observers are not paying particular attentio...

In this paper we will present an immersive multi- user environment for studying joint action and so- cial interaction. Besides the technical challenges of immersing multiple persons into a single virtual environment, additional research questions arise: Which parameters are coordinated during a joint action transportation task? In what way does the...