Visuomotor adaptation to virtual hand position in interactive virtual environments

In virtual environments the virtual hand may not always be exactly aligned with the real hand. Such misalignment may cause an adaptation of the users' eye-hand coordination. Further, misalignment may cause a decrease in manipulation performance compared to aligned conditions. This experimental study uses a prism-adaptation paradigm to explore visuomotor adaptation to misaligned virtual hand position. Participants were immersed in an interactive virtual environment with a deliberately misaligned virtual hand position (a lateral shift of 10 cm). We carried out pointing tests with a nonvisible hand in the real world before (pretest) and after (posttest) immersion in the virtual world. A comparison of pre- and post-tests revealed aftereffects of the adaptation of eye-hand coordination in the opposite direction of the lateral shift (negative aftereffects). The magnitude of the aftereffect was 20% under stereoscopic viewing conditions. However, decreased manipulation performance in VE (speed/accuracy) during the immersion with misaligned hand conditions was not found.