VR is more persuasive when the virtual environment conveys its situated affordances. Interaction and bodily presence in VR-based interventions is usually mediated through our virtual selves, which synchronously represent body movements or responses to events on external input devices. 

 

Presence. The most important aspect of immersion within VR defines the participant’s sense of “being there”. Focus on subjective cognition and persistence of feeling is essential to truly reap the advantages of virtual reality. Previous research has identified different constitutive components of embodiment, including body-ownership, self-location, and agency. We chose to focus on body-ownership in the form of exhalation.

 

Breath. Breathing is the only involuntary action in the body which also has the ability to be controlled voluntarily. We wished to explore exhalation as a factor contributing to bodily self-consciousness. The prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne collaborated with our team from USC Games, to undertake agency manipulation experiments for studying the connection between neuroscience and exhalation in VR. Our project idea is to rapidly prototype multiple scenarios in VR where the participants, use forced exhalations as a tool to interact with their surroundings. 

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We have developed a virtual lab for researchers exploring exhalation, using a haptic device, with various prototypes within the lab (eg. candles, bubbles, etc). In this way, we wish to provide a state-of-the-art interface for researchers who are seeking to explore presence, embodiment and agency in VR. Not only does our interface allow the researcher to control the parameters for each prototype a participant goes through, but it also provides the participant with a survey at the end to evaluate how strongly connected they felt to the environment.