Call for Position Papers
Avatar embodiment in VR refers to the experience of inhabiting a virtual body. This experience has bodily, emotional, cognitive, motivational, and cultural dimensions, but it is studied differently across experimental psychology, neuroscience, sensorimotor science, theatre and performance studies, HCI, and interaction design. Each field uses different constructs, different methods, and different explanatory frameworks. The experience itself is not well described or standardised between or within these disciplines.
This workshop brings researchers from these traditions together to describe the experience, compare the mechanisms each tradition proposes, and consider whether existing constructs adequately capture it or whether new ways of describing and studying it are needed.
Themes
The workshop discussion is organised around three themes, each assigned to one group of attendees.
Theme 1: Experience
What the experience of avatar embodiment consists of, and whether existing constructs capture it. Ownership, agency, and self-location in psychology; body schema and body image in neuroscience; enacted presence in performance studies; player identification and perceived control in games and interaction design. This group describes the experience as their participants or themselves have encountered it, then compares whether constructs from each field map onto those descriptions.
Theme 2: Cues
The cues that produce and change avatar embodiment. Visuomotor synchrony, visual appearance, morphology, narrative and social context, emotional development, spatial awareness, kinesthetic attention. This group maps which bodily, emotional, motivational, and social avatar cues each tradition has investigated, identifying similar themes across disciplines.
Theme 3: Measurement
How each field measures and studies embodiment, and whether those methods produce comparable findings. Self-report and physiological proxies in psychology; qualitative, autoethnographic, and movement-analysis accounts in performance traditions; first-person methods from phenomenological psychology. This group maps the methods' strengths and weaknesses, and looks for where a shared or mixed-method approach would enhance comparability.
Topics of Interest
We welcome submissions on, but not limited to, the following:
- Empirical studies of body ownership, agency, or self-location in VR or AR
- Physiological, behavioural, or kinematic correlates of embodiment
- Qualitative or phenomenological accounts of inhabiting a virtual body
- First-person methods applied to avatar embodiment (microphenomenology, descriptive experience sampling)
- Embodiment in non-anthropomorphic avatars, supernumerary limbs, or altered morphologies
- Accounts of embodiment from performance studies, mask work, movement analysis, or method acting
- Measurement tools for avatar embodiment and their validity across traditions
- The temporal dynamics of embodiment: onset, maintenance, and breakdown
- Emotional, motivational, or cultural dimensions of avatar embodiment
- Design parameters that affect the embodiment experience (appearance, control mapping, interaction affordances)
Submission Guidelines
We invite short position papers of two to four pages in length, including references, in the IEEE VGTC format. Papers should report a finding, a method, or an account of avatar embodiment from the author's tradition, or a critique of how embodiment is currently studied.
We especially invite contributions from fields that do not usually publish at IEEE VR, such as performance studies, cognitive neuroscience, phenomenological psychology, and movement science, although this is not an exhaustive list.
Submission link to be announced.
Detailed submission and review guidelines will be posted here once the submission system is ready.
At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the workshop and register for at least one day of the IEEE VR 2027 conference. Accepted position papers will be published in the IEEE Digital Library. Participants are invited to extend their papers for a special issue in the Empathic Computing Journal.
Workshop Format
The core activity is a guided group discussion using the Disney Method, run in three parallel groups (one per theme). Each group works through three stages: in the dreamer stage, participants generate accounts drawing on their own traditions without feasibility constraints; in the realist stage, participants examine how each account could be tested with current methods; in the critic stage, participants identify where accounts conflict and whether those conflicts reflect disagreements about mechanisms or differences in definition and measurement.
Preliminary Programme
- 08:45 to 09:00Coffee and mingle
- 09:00 to 09:15Introduction and ice breaking activity
- 09:15 to 09:45Keynote and questions
- 09:45 to 10:45Presentations from accepted papers, each followed by questions (5 min each)
- 10:45 to 11:00Coffee break
- 11:00 to 12:30Group discussion: three stages of 30 minutes (dreamer, realist, critic), synthesis of research questions and gaps
- 12:30 to 12:35Closing remarks
