An experimental study on the virtual representation of children

Is it their movements or appearance that helps us to identify a child as a child? In this work we created four video clips with a Virtual Character walking, but with different combinations of either child or adult animation applied on either a child or adult body. An experimental study was conducted with 53 participants who viewed all four videos in random orders. The results show that participants could easily identify the consistent video clips (child animation with child body, and adult animation with adult body). With the inconsistent video clips, both animation and body shape had an effect on participants´ judgments. They also reported higher level of empathy, care, and feeling of protection towards the child character as compared to the adult character. Finally, compared to appearance, animation seems to be playing a bigger role in invoking participants´ emotional responses.