Abstract
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 preand 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.