International Conferen e on Arti ial Reality and Telexisten eEurographi s Symposium on Virtual Environments (2016)
D. Reiners, D. Iwai, and F. Steini ke (Editors)

A study of sense of self-agen y fo used ondelay between a tion and effe t inross- orrelation andontinuous operation

Toshiki Kataoka1 , Kenji Funahashi1 , Koji Tanida2 , Katsuya Yashiro2
1

Nagoya Institute of Te hnology, Nagoya, Japan2
Honda R & D Co., Ltd., To higi, Japan

Abstra t

Sense of self-agen y has been proposed in psy hology eld, and it is the sense that I am the initiator or sour e of the a tion. We
dis uss it on ontinuous operation to nd out the transition of the sense for a hange of delay and ross- orrelation that is thedegree of noise between an a tion as an input signal and its effe t as an output signal. We on lude that sense of self-agen y isaffe ted by both of a ross- orrelation and a delay, human gets stronger sense of self-agen y when ross- orrelation between
a tion and effe t is higher, and an a eptable noise and delay to feel enough good operational feeling may be predi ted.

Categories and Subje t Des riptors (a ording to ACM CCS): H.1.2 [Information Systems℄: User/Ma hine SystemsHumanfa tors

X and Y are signals between whi h ross- orrelation is determined,

1. Introdu tion

Sense of self-agen y whi h is the sense that I am the initiatoror sour e of the a tion has been proposed in psy hology eld
[Gal00℄, and is spotlighted in ergonomi s and interfa e designelds [MW∗ 15℄. It is important to onsider the human per eption
in order to design a better interfa e and develop a VR system. However the resear hes about sense of self-agen y have fo used on disrete operation like turning indi ation on at the pressing of a button [FVH13℄. In this study we dis uss sense of agen y on ontinuous operation to nd out the hange of the sense for a hange ofdelay and ross- orrelation, whi h is the degree of noise between
an a tion and its effe t as an input and output signal [KFTY16℄.
First some kinds of operation were observed to ompare the differen e of sense of agen y. And we onsidered an a eptable degree ofnoise and delay to feel the sense of self-agen y, in other word good
operational feeling. It is expe ted that this is useful for ergonomi sinterfa e design.
2. Experiment 1: sense of self-agen y andand t is delay between them. We performed the following experiment. Parti ipants who had been sought from the publi and took
part in this experiment of their own free will were 10 men and
10 women, and about 20 years old. They re eived explanationsof this resear h ontents orally and through do uments, and gave
informed onsent in writing. This experiment is a epted by thebioethi s review of Nagoya Institute of Te hnology and Honda R& D Co., Ltd. Parti ipants operated a for e feedba k devi e Geomagi Phantom (Fig.1) in three ways; (1) stroke  ba k and forward
movement, (2) twist  rotation of a stylus devi e, and (3) push  apply pressure forward. Then four outputs sele ted from eight typesof output were displayed; (1, 2) linear and ir ular gauges (Fig.2),(3, 4) ir les that size and brightness are hanged, (5) one digit likeseven segment arabi numerals, (6, 7) sounds that frequen y andvolume are hanged, and (8) push-pull for e feedba k. Two typesof sound output were not presented at the same time, and pushross- orrelation in

ontinuous signals

It was reported that human obtains sense of self-agen y when a tual results of their a tion mat hes the expe tation [BWF02℄. First
we made the following hypothesis: human gets stronger sense ofself-agen y when ross- orrelation between ontinuous a tion andeffe t gets higher. Here a oef ient of ross- orrelation is dened
as follow:
Tå {X (t )Y (t + t)}
C = max t =1.
tkX (t )kkY (t )k2016 The Author(s)Eurographi s Pro eedings

2016 The Eurographi s Asso iation.

(1)

Figure 1: Appearan e of experi-ment

Linear andir ular gauges

Figure 2:

T. Kataoka et al. / A study of sense of self-agen y fo used onross- orrelation and delay between a tion and effe t inoperation and for e feedba k were not ombined together. Only
one of the outputs was syn hronized with the input, it means theross- orrelation was strong and the oef ient is 1.00. The others were moved randomly, not syn hronized, the ross- orrelations
were weak and oef ients were set around 0.3 for the sing urve
input with frequen y 1/2p and amplitude 1 (same as the range ofinput operation) in this experiment, and without any delay. Parti ipants answered whi h they think they were operating. The numberof ombinations of input and output was 3 × 8 − 1 = 23, total trial
number was 23 × 14 = 322. The trials were divided almost equallyand randomly for 20 parti ipants. They answered it in about 10
se onds for ea h trial. The orre t answer rate in ea h ombination of their input operation and operation target was approximately
100 %. Therefore the hypothesis has been validated. There was nosigni ant differen e in the ombination and its orre t answer rate
( 2 (22) = 21.23, p > 0.05). It does not mean that the strength ofsense of self-agen y was dependent on the operation form and thepresentation type of the target. Espe ially human also feels ertain
sense of self-agen y operating a on ept as a number that requires
higher pro essing of information.
3. Experiment 2: sense of self-agen y forross- orrelation anddelay

Next we performed the experiment to examine how sense of selfagen y was affe ted by hanges of ross- orrelation and delay. Parti ipants operated the target bar to follow the example bar (Fig. 3).
The output signal as the target was affe ted by noise and delay,
then it was dif ult to follow the example exa tly. They evaluatedsense of self-agen y in ve steps subje tively for ea h ombination of ross- orrelation and delay. It should be noted that we instru ted them to answer whether they felt they an operate it bythemselves be ause we onsidered that they were not familiar withthe word, sense of self-agen y. The delay levels were four as 0.0,0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 se onds, and the ross- orrelation oef ient levels were ve as 1.00, 0.98, 0.96, 0.94 and 0.92. The noise was implemented by addition of sing urve with random frequen y andamplitude that hange every period, the parameters were set empiri ally. Before the experiment parti ipants experien ed the ongurations delay 0.0  oef ient 1.00, and delay 1.0  oef ient 0.80
for referen es. They operated it for 30 se onds for ea h trial, total
trial number was 4 × 5 × 10 = 200. The trials were divided equallyand randomly for 20 parti ipants. Figure 4 shows the result of theevaluation value of sense of self-agen y. Both of ross- orrelationand delay had a signi ant effe t to the sense ((F4,180 = 40.468 >3.425, p < 0.01), (F3,180 = 7.688 > 3.892, p < 0.01)). The multiple regression equation for the value of sense of self-agen y (S) was
obtained as follow:
S = 23.88 × C − 1.18 × D − 19.41,(2)

ontinuous operation

Figure 4: Evaluation value of sense of self-agen ywhere C is ross- orrelation oef ient and D is delay. The multiple
orrelation oef ient was 0.63. The result suggests that the degreeof sense of self-agen y an be predi ted from ross- orrelation anddelay.
4. Con lusion

In this study, we resear hed the transition of sense of self-agen y
fo used on delay and ross- orrelation that was the degree of noise
between the ontinuous a tion and its effe t. Our experiment results validate and suggest as follows. Human gets stronger sense ofself-agen y when ross- orrelation between a tion and effe t getshigher. Human also feels ertain sense of self-agen y operating aon ept that requires higher pro essing of information. Both of aross- orrelation and a delay have a signi ant effe t to sense ofself-agen y. The degree of sense of self-agen y an be predi tedfrom ross- orrelation and delay. An a eptable noise and delay tofeel enough sense of self-agen y may be predi ted. In the future
we would like to resear h the hanges of sense of self-agen y forvarious fa tors in terms of in reasing the type and number of input, the form of output and type of sensory organs to re eive it.
We also would like to ompare the a ura y of the operation andsense of agen y, and onsider the situation where their transitions
are different.
Referen es[BWF02℄ B LAKEMORE S. J., W OLPERT D. M., F RITH C. D.: Abnormalities in the awareness of a tion. Trends in Cognitive S ien e 6, 6(2002), 237242. 1[FVH13℄ FARRER C., VALENTIN G., H UPE J.: The time windows of thesense of agen y. Cons iousness and Cognition 22, 4 (2013), 14311441.
1[Gal00℄ G ALLAGHER S.: Philosophi al on eptions of the self: impliations for ognitive s ien e. Trends in Cognitive S ien e 4, 1 (2000),1421. 1[KFTY16℄ K ATAOKA T., F UNAHASHI K., TANIDA K., YASHIRO K.:
A study of sense of self-agen y fo used on ross orrelation and delay
between a tion and effe t in operation. Pro eedings of the 21st Annual
Conferen e of the Virtual Reality So iety of Japan (in Japanese) (2016),
13B02. 1[MW∗ 15℄ M INOHARA R., W EN W., , H AMASAKI S., M AEDA T.,
K ATO M., YAMAKAWA H., YAMASHITA A., A SAMA H.: Evaluationof the effe t of the power of button-pushing on sense of agen y. Proeedings of 20th Roboti s Symposia (in Japanese) (2015), 139144. 1

Figure 3: Visual outputs of example and target
2016 The Author(s)Eurographi s Pro eedings

2016 The Eurographi s Asso iation.