Fig 1.
Exemplary illustration of two trials.
In each trial, the participant had the task to rate a virtual human character first regarding sexual attractiveness and afterwards regarding realism. Throughout the attractiveness rating, the time from stimulus onset until the rating was measured without the knowledge of the subject. All in all, there were 20 trials, ten trials showing male characters and ten trials presenting female characters. The order of the trials was fully randomized.
Fig 2.
Schematic overview of the three experimental conditions.
In the conventional condition virtual characters were presented on a standard desktop PC enabling only monoscopic viewing, no head tracking and no interactivity. In the immersive condition a Head Mounted Display (HMD) was used, enabling stereoscopic viewing and head tracking. The immersive+ condition used the same technical equipment as the immersive condition, but additionally allowed the participant to turn around the virtual human characters. Note that the procedure was exactly the same in all three experimental conditions.
Table 1.
Means and SDs for the SSQ Total score as a function of subject Group, experimental Condition, and Time point.
Table 2.
Results of the linear mixed model with Subject Group, Experimental Condition and Time point as fixed factors and random intercepts, that were different for each individual subject at each Time point and at each Experimental condition, for the SSQ Total score.
Table 3.
Means and SDs for the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) [17] as a function of subject Group and Condition.
Table 4.
Results of the linear mixed models with Subject Group and Experimental Condition as fixed factors and a random intercept, that was different for each individual subject, for all sub-scales of the IPQ.
Table 5.
Means and SDs for the realism rating, sexual attractiveness rating, and Viewing time as a function of subject Group, Condition, and Gender of virtual character.
Table 6.
Results of the linear mixed models with Subject Group, Experimental Condition and Gender of virtual character as fixed factors and the main effects and interaction of the within-subject factors as random slopes, that were different for each subject, and a random intercept, that was different for each virtual character, for Realism rating, Sexual attractiveness rating, and Viewing Time.
Fig 3.
Means and SDs of sexual attractiveness ratings as a function of subject Group, Condition, and Gender of virtual character.
Sexual attractiveness rating comprised a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not sexually attractive) to 5 (very sexually attractive). Blue lines represent mean sexual attractiveness ratings for female virtual characters, black lines mean sexual attractiveness ratings for male virtual characters. * p <.05, ** p <.01, *** p <.001.
Fig 4.
Means and SDs of the viewing time in milliseconds (ms) as a function of subject Group, Condition, and Gender of virtual character.
Blue lines represent mean viewing times for female virtual characters, black lines mean viewing times for male virtual characters. * p <.05, ** p <.01, *** p <.001.
Table 7.
Means and SDs for the Sexual orientation Index (SOI) as a function of subject Group and experimental Condition.