We have developed a 3D collaborative virtual environment (CVE), where two subjects must collaborate in order to solve a task implying referential communication. The subjects, represented in the virtual reality (VR) by simple red cones (the avatars), must first identify an object among others, according to a model which is given to them. Once that one of the subject thinks he/she has found the object corresponding to the model, he/she (the emitter) must propose it to his/her partner (the receiver) so that the receiver can accept or reject the proposal. The task of the receiver is made problematic because the avatars do not have a front/back indication. This is due to the fact that the CVE does not allow the emitter to verbally describe the object to which he refers, nor indicates the object by usual gestures. On the other hand the subjects sometimes have an 'awareness tool' (AT), that is an indication of the field of view (i.e. 'view awareness') of their partner. The field of view of the partner is represented by an illumination of the objects being at any moment in the field of view of the partner. The presence or absence of the AT respectively constitutes the experimental conditions of our research.
Confronted to such an ambiguous situation we think that the receiver will use other clues in order to identify the object indicated by the emitter. 20 pairs took part in the experiment (N=20).
According to our first hypothesis, the receiver uses the proximity of the emitter to the various objects present in the virtual space: The proximity of the emitter to the referred object clarifies the context of referenciation. The results show that the distance to the referred object of the emitter is positively correlated with the effort of reduction of ambiguity of the receiver.
According to our second assumption, the receiver should also use the AT when it is available in order to guess which object the emitter refers to: The 'view awareness' clarifies the context of referenciation. The results reject this hypothesis (F(1,195)=.000, p=.983).
Our third hypothesis postulates that the presence of the AT influences the emitter to slacken its effort of collaboration: The distance from the emitter to the referred object should increase with the 'view awareness'. A variance analysis does not reveal any significant interactions for this third hypothesis.