Does the avatar provide a cue for recognition both of proximate and distant objects?

Abstract

The appearance of another person sitting near an object affects the observer’s recognition of the object. This was examined using a discrimination task of canonical and mirror-reversed letters, showing that discrimination was faster for letters facing toward than away from an avatar. We replicated this finding in Experiment 1 with online settings and found that the benefit of the avatar was the largest when letters rotated 120 degrees toward the avatar. We examined the effect of the distance between the avatar and the letter in Experiment 2. The results showed that the benefit of the avatar on letter discriminations was larger when letters were proximate to the avatar than distant. However, we did not find statistical support for that the avatar’s effect depended on proximity. We will investigate further whether avatar serves as a cue for people to perceive near and far objects from her/him.