Day 1. Free Communications – Psychology (Session 2): The influence of body language and expected competency on gaze behaviour while forming an initial impression of a tennis player.

D1.S3.4(4). BASES Conference 2015 (Burton-on-Trent), 1-2 December. British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences

Expectancy effects in tennis: The impact of body language and playing record on impressions of a tennis player and ratings of performance

This study examined the impact that pre-event body language and knowledge of a performer’s playing record had on ratings of tennis performance. Participants (N = 123) were allocated to one of four experimental groups (good body language/bad body language vs. positive playing record/negative playing record) and viewed a live player warming up and completing a series of tennis shots. Information outlining the player’s recent win/loss record was coupled with body language condition during a period of warm-up footage. Likert-type scales were employed to record impressions of the player and judgements as to the quality of the play. ANCOVA revealed that the player was viewed more favourably having displayed positive as opposed to negative body language (p<.001). Participants presented with a positive playing record (p = .001) formed a more favourable impression and rated the players performance more positively (p = 0.001). The study corroborates and extends the findings of recent work incorporating live models in expectancy effects investigations.

Sex-related invariance across cultures in an online role-playing game

This study examines the Social Dominance Orientation of players of the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. The World of Warcraft offers an opportunity to investigate social dominance and biological sex differences in an environment where there is no cultural dominance of one sex over another. Social Dominance Orientation has been found to be different between males and females, with males scoring higher. However, this might be the consequence of social context. To this end sex differences between male and female players were investigated in the World of Warcraft environment, as well as the effects of chosen character sex. Player sex and character sex were found to have effects on Social Dominance Orientation. These results add further support to claims that Social Dominance Orientation has the characteristics of a sexually selected disposition to acquire resources and out-compete rival groups.

Playing immersive games on the REVERIE platform

REVERIE (REal and Virtual Engagement in Realistic Immersive Environments) [1] is a multimedia and multimodal framework, which supports the creation of immersive games. The framework supports the creation of games integrating technologies such as 3D spatial audio, detection of the player’s body movement using Kinect and WIMO sensors, NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) with advanced AI capabilities featuring various levels of representation and gameplay into an immersive 3D environment. A demonstration game was developed for REVERIE, which is an adapted version of the popular Simon Says game. In the REVERIE version, a player tries to follow physical instructions issued by two autonomous agents with different degrees of realism. If a player follows a physical instruction correctly, they are awarded one point. If not, they are deducted one point. This paper presents a technical overview of the game technologies integrated in the Simon Says demo and its evaluation by players with variable computer literacy skills. Finally the potential of REVERIE as an immersive framework for gaming is discussed, followed by recommendations for improvements in future versions of the framework.