Sound Research WIKINDX

"Virtual presence is generally conceived of as a hypothetical subjective state of awareness and involvement in a non-present environment."

Proposes a number of psychphysiological means to assess presence.

The authors base their definition of presence in virtual environments (being there) on presence in non-virtual or real worlds and take this foundational definition from Webster's: ""Presence" generally refers to the sense of being present in time or space at a particular location"

Note that presence can occur when only a subset of sensory modalities are engaged. Claim that many VEs "successfully invoke presence" via auditory and visual modalities only.

"I intend to argue that the self is composed of an experiencing ego, a self-schema, and an associated set of personal memories and autobiographical facts.

Ego. By ego I mean the conscious experiencing entity that is the focus of our phenomenal experience. The ego is the aspect of a person that experiences things from the "inside." The ego is the conscious aspect of the mind that moves through space and time. It is the memory for the ego's moment-to-moment experience that we call personal memories.

Self-schema. The self-schema is the cognitive structure that contains generic knowledge about the self. In the same way that individuals have knowledge about the solar system or knowledge about Walter Cronkite, individuals have knowledge about themselves. This knowledge is presumably organized into unconscious mental structures that interact with incoming information about the self (Brewer & Nakamura, 1984; Rumelhart, 1980). Some of the information that goes into making up the self-schema is private and available only to the self; other information is public and available to an observer. The self-schema must be one of the richer knowledge structures in an individual's long-term memory; hence, once it has developed, it probably changes only slowly, thus providing consistency to the self over time.

Self. The self is the complex mental structure that includes the ego, the self-schema, and portions of long-term memory related to the ego-self (e.g., personal memories, generic personal memories, and autobiographical facts).

Individual. The individual is the larger entity that includes the self, the de-personalized (nonself) aspects of the mind, and the body. Thus, it is the individual who has depersonalized knowledge about biology (e.g., a robin has wings) and who possesses cognitive skills (e.g., can carry out long division), motor skills (e.g., can ride a bicycle), and rote skills (e.g., can recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address)."

Calleja favors the term incorporation over immersion or presence because the latter two "are defined by their discontinuity from the real physical world [whereas] incorporation occurs [when playing a computer game, for example] when the game world is present to the player while simultaneously the player is present, via an avatar, to the virtual environment."

For incorporation to occur, the medium must "specifically acknowledge the player's presence and agency within the virtual world."

"Current virtual environments are primarily conceptualized as information technologies, while they should instead be considered "knowledge technologies"."

Proposes 5 dimensions to presence (dimensions come from experience design theories):

sensory – sensory input and perceptions (VR: hardware and software)
cognitive – mental engagement (VR: task engagement [motivation, meaningfulness, continuity])
affective – emotional state (VR: emotions in VR mimic emotions in same RW scenario?)
active – personal connection, incorporation into personal narrative (VR: empathy, avatar identification etc.)
relational – social aspects (VR: co-experience and collaborative experience of VR)

Talking of workers manipulating mechanical arms (viz. teleoperation): "They know perfectly well where they are and are not fooled into false beliefs by the experience, yet it is as if they were inside the isolation chamber they are peering into. With mental effort, they can manage to shift their point of view back and forth, rather like making a transparent Neckar cube or an Escher drawing change orientation before one's eyes. It does seem extravagent to suppose that in performing this bit of mental gymnastics, they are transporting themselves back and forth." (italics in original)

Re Gibson, "action takes precedence. The experience depends more on what can be "done" than on the quality of visual or acoustic images."

"the reality of experience (i.e. presence or immersion)."

Two major differences between flow and presence: "(1) flow involves a narrow focus on a limited range of task characteristics, whereas presence involves a broader awareness of the task ecology; and (2) flow is associated with feelings of control whereas presence has been associated with novel ecologies involving a lack of predictability that makes feelings of control difficult."

Of paintings by Claude-Joseph Vernet, where Diderot imagines himself wandering through and extending the depicted landscape and activities: "Who knows how long I spent in that state of enchantment?" (translated by Fried).

According to Diderot, one forgets one's presence in front of the painting: one is in the painting and "that is the strongest magic of art" (translated by Fried).

"We regard presence as a successful substitution of real sensory data by articifially generated sensory data. By a successful substitution we mean that the participant acts upon these artificially generated stimuli as if they came from the real world. By acting, we mean that we expect the participant’s response to be similar to the response in the real world on many levels, ranging from unconscious automatic responses through deliberate volitional behavior, up to the subjective feeling of being there."

"A VE with higher immersion, so the argument goes, should lead to higher fidelity, and generate a greater sense of presence, the subjective experience felt by the user. But if I put you in a highly immersive environment and give you badly designed content to experience, will you perceive the VE as realistic and experience presence? Probably not. What’s missing from this dichotomy of immersion (objective, system-focused) and presence (subjective, user-focused) is a computational theory about the extent to which the VE reflects the expected regularities of world that it is attempting to represent—its authenticity. Authenticity draws on two streams of thought: expectations and motivations."

"Authenticity’s second stream of thought comes from art historians and archaeologists who think carefully about the past, and who often seek to establish whether artifacts found in the present are authentic. While establishing an artifact’s date and place of origin might be a matter of objective fact, Lovata (2007) argues that these facts are simply nominal authenticity, and that a richer, more complex sense of authenticity is context dependent, and depends on the motivations of the observer."

"When you walk into a room in the real world, it does not verbally or musically greet you or start raining."

Heeter proposes a "social construction of virtual reality" following philosophers' discussion of the social constrution of reality.

"Social presence refers to the extent to which other beings (living or synthetic) also exist in the world and appear to react to you."

Different genders, ages etc. might have different criteria for presence. Equally, humans have preferred sensory channels and so this channel might be preferred for attaining presence: "Is one person's experience of presence in a virtual world the same as another's?"

Although many real worlds do not respond to you, as if acknowledging your presence, the lack of response in VR might limit presence (cf environmental presence).

"To be human is to be embodied, to exist in a sea of bodily sensations far vaster than our limited attentional spotlight can attend to. Bodily sensations are the substrate of all experience. Even our emotions and thoughts are experienced in and by the body. And yet, most of the time, most of us focus on something other these present- moment sensations. Most of the time, we are not present. How people structure their attention ‘‘determines what will or will not appear in consciousness’’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Embodied presence occurs when our mind integrates attention to embodied feelings with other present-moment bodily sensations to produce a heightened awareness of the moment and of the sensory self. However, the major theories of presence (social presence, copresence, self-presence, hyper presence, and external presence) all define presence as an illusion about the virtual-ness of a virtual experience (Schultze, 2010). Their approach implies that we are always present when there is no virtuality. In this essay, I will argue that 1) regardless of virtuality, we are almost never present; 2) embodied presence is an attentional orientation that is learned and practiced; and 3) the design of virtual experiences can facilitate embodied presence."

"the normal human condition is to not be present."

"Closing the eyes activates interoception. . . closing eyes some of the time enhanced interoceptive awareness and when eyes re-opened, the virtual world felt different. More vivid . . . Closing the eyes animates our somatosensory systems including touch, proprioception (vibration and position), pain, and temperature (Jao et al., 2013). Closing the eyes also activates olfaction (smell) and gustatory systems (taste), even in the absence of olfactory or gustatory stimuli (Wiesmann et al., 2006). Closing the eyes activates our interoception network (used for processing the internal state) that includes imagination and memory (Xu et al., 2014). Opening the eyes is associated with stronger ‘‘local ef- ficiency’’ in specific regions of the brain and an increase in specialized information processing. But this comes at a cost. Opening the eyes suppresses interoception. Opening the eyes reduces the synchronicity, global effi- ciency, and integrated connections across visual, somatic, and auditory sensory systems (Jao et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2014). Opening the eyes suppresses imagination, mem- ory, and perception of internal states."

Jao, T., Ve ́rtes, P. E., Alexander-Bloch, A. F., Tang, I.-N., Yu, Y.-C., Chen, J.-H., & Bullmore, E. T. (2013). Volitional eyes opening perturbs brain dynamics and functional con- nectivity regardless of light input. NeuroImage, 69, 21–34.

Wiesmann, M., Kopietz, R., Albrecht, J., Linn, J., Reime, U., Kara, E., . . . Stephan, T. (2006). Eye closure in darkness ani- mates olfactory and gustatory cortical areas. NeuroImage, 32(1), 293–300.

Xu, P., Huang, R., Wang, J., Van Dam, N. T., Xie, T., Dong, Z., . . . Luo, Y. (2014). Different topological organization of human brain functional networks with eyes open versus eyes closed. NeuroImage, 90, 246–255.

Discussing means of measuring presence – can be objective or subjective measurements and the former are mainly based around tasks.

Presence is "an illusory shift in point of view"

"Characteristics of the medium can be subdivided into media form and media content variables. Both of these are known to have a significant impact on the individual's sense of presence such that, depending on the levels of appropriate, rich, consistent, and captivating sensory stimulation, varying levels of presence can be produced."

"Draper et al. (1998) define telepresence as “the perception of presence within a physically remote or simulated site,” which suggests, de facto, that presence is a valid construct in relation to experience of the real (physical) world. This is a contentious issue, a full discussion of which is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is our view that presence is a more useful concept when it is limited to the study of users’ experiences of mediated presentations. Real-world experience can be adequately described in terms of more traditional psychological constructs: such as attention, involvement, and arousal, to name but a few. There seems little to gain from describing people’s everyday experience in terms of presence [...] At the very least, though, real-world experience is useful to presence research insofar as it serves as a benchmark, or standard, against which to subjectively judge levels of presence in mediated environments."

Draper, J. V., Kaber, D. B., & Usher, J. M. (1998). Telepresence. Human Factors, 40, 354 –375.

Summarizing determinants of presence:

media form: extent of sensory information provided, user's degree of control in positioning sensory systems in the environment, user's ability to modify the environment
media content: theme, narrative or story
user characteristics: individual characteristics affecting presence.

A review (in 1997) of various definitions of presence: "Each represents one or more aspects of what we define here formally as presence: the perceptual illusion of non-mediation."

Externalization or distal attribution: "that most of our perceptual experience, though originating with stimulation of our sense organs, is referred to external space beyond the limits of our sensory organs."

"presence and distal attribution beyond the limits of some extending device (probe, teleoperator, virtual display) are not fundamentally different phenomena. Rather, they differ only that true presence occurs when the sensory data support only the interpretation of being somewhere other than where the sense organs are located; whereas, distal attribution to a remote location occurs when the sensory data represent both the remote location and that device or linkage that connects the observer with that remote location."

In arguing that distal attribution re telepresence is most clearly felt when the operators have become skilled with the equipment, Loomis suggests that with regard to a lawful relationship between efference and afference, the operator must be able to model this relationship. This 'linkage' becomes transparent with experience and this leads to the externalization of the distal environment.

Barfield, W., & Weghorst, S. 1993, August 8–13. The sense of presence within virtual environments: A conceptual framework. Paper presented at Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Amsterdam.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:22
"Virtual presence is generally conceived of as a hypothetical subjective state of awareness and involvement in a non-present environment."
Attempting to assess presence: "we might expect a performance decrement on concurrent tasks defined solely in the natural environment. And when natural and virtual frames of reference call for conflicting responses, the direction of resolution of the conflict may also serve as an indicator of the degree of presence within each. Furthermore, as the sense of presence increases, the attentional resoures allocated to the objects or tasks performed in the virtual environment should increase. Therefore, we postulate that as the sense of presence increases, the virtual environment participant will pay less attention to sensory input external to the virtual environment."
Proposes a number of psychphysiological means to assess presence.
Proposes a number of factors influencing presence in VEs (virtual presence): display fidelity environmental stability sensory bandwidth (phenomenal richness) interactive fidelity person variables task variables context variables
Barfield, W., Zeltzer, D., Sheridan, T. B., & Slater, M. (1995). Presence and performance within virtual environments. In W. Barfield & T. A. Furness III (Eds.), Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design. (pp. 473–513). New York: Oxford University Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 06/07/2020, 09:01
The authors base their definition of presence in virtual environments (being there) on presence in non-virtual or real worlds and take this foundational definition from Webster's: ""Presence" generally refers to the sense of being present in time or space at a particular location"
"An important point to emphasize is that it is necessary for attentional resources to be directed to stimulus information before the sense of presence can occur."
Note that presence can occur when only a subset of sensory modalities are engaged. Claim that many VEs "successfully invoke presence" via auditory and visual modalities only.
Brewer, W. F. (1986). What is autobiographical memory? In D. C. Rubin (Ed), Autobiographical memory. (pp. 25–49). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 14/07/2020, 08:37
"I intend to argue that the self is composed of an experiencing ego, a self-schema, and an associated set of personal memories and autobiographical facts. Ego. By ego I mean the conscious experiencing entity that is the focus of our phenomenal experience. The ego is the aspect of a person that experiences things from the "inside." The ego is the conscious aspect of the mind that moves through space and time. It is the memory for the ego's moment-to-moment experience that we call personal memories. Self-schema. The self-schema is the cognitive structure that contains generic knowledge about the self. In the same way that individuals have knowledge about the solar system or knowledge about Walter Cronkite, individuals have knowledge about themselves. This knowledge is presumably organized into unconscious mental structures that interact with incoming information about the self (Brewer & Nakamura, 1984; Rumelhart, 1980). Some of the information that goes into making up the self-schema is private and available only to the self; other information is public and available to an observer. The self-schema must be one of the richer knowledge structures in an individual's long-term memory; hence, once it has developed, it probably changes only slowly, thus providing consistency to the self over time. Self. The self is the complex mental structure that includes the ego, the self-schema, and portions of long-term memory related to the ego-self (e.g., personal memories, generic personal memories, and autobiographical facts). Individual. The individual is the larger entity that includes the self, the de-personalized (nonself) aspects of the mind, and the body. Thus, it is the individual who has depersonalized knowledge about biology (e.g., a robin has wings) and who possesses cognitive skills (e.g., can carry out long division), motor skills (e.g., can ride a bicycle), and rote skills (e.g., can recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address)."
Bystrom, K.-E., Barfield, W., & Hendrix, C. (1999). A conceptual model of the sense of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 8(2), 241–244.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:22
Calleja, G. (2014). Immersion in virtual worlds. In M. Grimshaw (Ed), The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. (pp. 222–236). New York: Oxford University Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:21
Calleja favors the term incorporation over immersion or presence because the latter two "are defined by their discontinuity from the real physical world [whereas] incorporation occurs [when playing a computer game, for example] when the game world is present to the player while simultaneously the player is present, via an avatar, to the virtual environment."
Calleja's main bone of contention with concepts such as immersion and presence is that they imply that the user of a virtual environment is "merely a subjective consciousness being poured into the containing vessel of the virtual environment."
For incorporation to occur, the medium must "specifically acknowledge the player's presence and agency within the virtual world."
"while high-fidelity systems are an important part of enhancing the intensity of an experience, they do not themselves create a sense of presence."
Chertoff, D. B., Schatz, S. L., McDaniel, R., & Bowers, C. A. (2008). Improving presence theory through experiential design. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 17(4), 405–413.
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"Current virtual environments are primarily conceptualized as information technologies, while they should instead be considered "knowledge technologies"."
"presence is an emergent factor due to the interaction of many components [...] it is a result that is greater than the sum of its parts."
Proposes 5 dimensions to presence (dimensions come from experience design theories): sensory – sensory input and perceptions (VR: hardware and software) cognitive – mental engagement (VR: task engagement [motivation, meaningfulness, continuity]) affective – emotional state (VR: emotions in VR mimic emotions in same RW scenario?) active – personal connection, incorporation into personal narrative (VR: empathy, avatar identification etc.) relational – social aspects (VR: co-experience and collaborative experience of VR)
Dennett, D. C. (1978). Brainstorms: Philosophical essays on mind and psychology. Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:21
Talking of workers manipulating mechanical arms (viz. teleoperation): "They know perfectly well where they are and are not fooled into false beliefs by the experience, yet it is as if they were inside the isolation chamber they are peering into. With mental effort, they can manage to shift their point of view back and forth, rather like making a transparent Neckar cube or an Escher drawing change orientation before one's eyes. It does seem extravagent to suppose that in performing this bit of mental gymnastics, they are transporting themselves back and forth." (italics in original)
Flach, J. M., & Holden, J. G. (1998). The reality of experience: Gibson's way. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(1), 90–95.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:21
Re Gibson, "action takes precedence. The experience depends more on what can be "done" than on the quality of visual or acoustic images."
"in the design of experiences in virtual environments the constraints on action take precedence over the constraints on perception."
"the reality of experience (i.e. presence or immersion)."
Fontaine, G. (1992). The experience of a sense of presence in intercultural and international encounters. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(4), 482–490.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:21
Two major differences between flow and presence: "(1) flow involves a narrow focus on a limited range of task characteristics, whereas presence involves a broader awareness of the task ecology; and (2) flow is associated with feelings of control whereas presence has been associated with novel ecologies involving a lack of predictability that makes feelings of control difficult."
Fried, M. (1980). Absorption and theatricality: Painting and beholder in the age of Diderot. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:21
Of paintings by Claude-Joseph Vernet, where Diderot imagines himself wandering through and extending the depicted landscape and activities: "Who knows how long I spent in that state of enchantment?" (translated by Fried).
Discussing a painting by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, Diderot states that it "puts you in the scene" but, rather than merely being an observer of the pastoral setting and musical absorption depicted in the painting, Diderot feels compelled to take part in and extend the action: "I shall go and sit next to the boy; and when night draws near, all three of us together will accompany the good old man to his hut". (Translation by Fried.)
According to Diderot, one forgets one's presence in front of the painting: one is in the painting and "that is the strongest magic of art" (translated by Fried).
Diderot's views call for an obliteration of the beholder's presence in front of the painting and the transportation of "the beholder's physical presence" to within the painting. Beholder and painting become "a closed and self-sufficient system".
Friedman, D., Brogni, A., Guger, C., Antley, A., Steed, A., & Slater, M. (2006). Sharing and analyzing data from presence experiments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15(5), 599–610.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 16:52
"We regard presence as a successful substitution of real sensory data by articifially generated sensory data. By a successful substitution we mean that the participant acts upon these artificially generated stimuli as if they came from the real world. By acting, we mean that we expect the participant’s response to be similar to the response in the real world on many levels, ranging from unconscious automatic responses through deliberate volitional behavior, up to the subjective feeling of being there."
Gilbert, S. B. (2016). Perceived realism of virtual environments depends on authenticity. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 25(4), 322–324.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 23/05/2021, 09:53
"A VE with higher immersion, so the argument goes, should lead to higher fidelity, and generate a greater sense of presence, the subjective experience felt by the user. But if I put you in a highly immersive environment and give you badly designed content to experience, will you perceive the VE as realistic and experience presence? Probably not. What’s missing from this dichotomy of immersion (objective, system-focused) and presence (subjective, user-focused) is a computational theory about the extent to which the VE reflects the expected regularities of world that it is attempting to represent—its authenticity. Authenticity draws on two streams of thought: expectations and motivations."
"While the perception of a virtual environment (VE) is usually described in terms of its level of immersion and users’ sense of presence, the construct of authenticity might be more useful. The authenticity of a VE depends on whether the affordances and simulations chosen in its implementation support (1) users’ expectations based on their Bayesian priors for regularities in the real world and (2) the users’ intentions in the VE . . . the term ‘‘authenticity’’ refers to whether the virtual environment provides the experience expected by the user, both consciously and unconsciously."
"Authenticity’s second stream of thought comes from art historians and archaeologists who think carefully about the past, and who often seek to establish whether artifacts found in the present are authentic. While establishing an artifact’s date and place of origin might be a matter of objective fact, Lovata (2007) argues that these facts are simply nominal authenticity, and that a richer, more complex sense of authenticity is context dependent, and depends on the motivations of the observer."
"I suggest that immersion is the system-based factor that influences presence, and that authenticity is the human-based factor that influences presence"
Heeter, C. (1992). Being there: The subjective experience of presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(2), 262–271.
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"When you walk into a room in the real world, it does not verbally or musically greet you or start raining."
"[The virtual world responds like the natural world] and in a way that differentiates self from world. You move and the world stays still."
Heeter proposes a "social construction of virtual reality" following philosophers' discussion of the social constrution of reality.
"Environmental presence refers to the extent to which the environment itself appears to know that you are there and to react to you [sic]."
"Social presence refers to the extent to which other beings (living or synthetic) also exist in the world and appear to react to you."
Personal presence is subjective and "is a measure of the extent to which and the reasons why you feel like you are in a virtual world."
Different genders, ages etc. might have different criteria for presence. Equally, humans have preferred sensory channels and so this channel might be preferred for attaining presence: "Is one person's experience of presence in a virtual world the same as another's?"
Familiarity and experience with the virtual world might increase the sense of presence. Conversely (Heeter does not note the contradiction), familiarity breeds contempt as expectations rise and previously adequate presence experiences later suffer in light of new technological capability. cf Uncanny Wall (Tinwell, Grimshaw, & Williams 2011).
Although many real worlds do not respond to you, as if acknowledging your presence, the lack of response in VR might limit presence (cf environmental presence).
Suggests that different tasks in VR might require more or less sensory fidelity (compared to real world sensory environments) in order to attain a sense of presence.
Heeter, C. (2016). A meditation on meditation and embodied presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 25(2), 175–183.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 01/09/2020, 12:38
"To be human is to be embodied, to exist in a sea of bodily sensations far vaster than our limited attentional spotlight can attend to. Bodily sensations are the substrate of all experience. Even our emotions and thoughts are experienced in and by the body. And yet, most of the time, most of us focus on something other these present- moment sensations. Most of the time, we are not present. How people structure their attention ‘‘determines what will or will not appear in consciousness’’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Embodied presence occurs when our mind integrates attention to embodied feelings with other present-moment bodily sensations to produce a heightened awareness of the moment and of the sensory self. However, the major theories of presence (social presence, copresence, self-presence, hyper presence, and external presence) all define presence as an illusion about the virtual-ness of a virtual experience (Schultze, 2010). Their approach implies that we are always present when there is no virtuality. In this essay, I will argue that 1) regardless of virtuality, we are almost never present; 2) embodied presence is an attentional orientation that is learned and practiced; and 3) the design of virtual experiences can facilitate embodied presence."
"embodied presence is an attentional orientation that is learned and practice"
"the normal human condition is to not be present."
"Interoceptive awareness is a prerequisite for embodied presence . . . The interoceptive pathway and the DMN are competing neural pathways. They are not active at the same time . . . Interoceptive awareness refers to sensitivity to and awareness of physical sensations such as tempera- ture, pain, touch, and sensing from internal gastrointes- tinal, respiratory, cardiovascular, and urogenital systems."
"Closing the eyes activates interoception. . . closing eyes some of the time enhanced interoceptive awareness and when eyes re-opened, the virtual world felt different. More vivid . . . Closing the eyes animates our somatosensory systems including touch, proprioception (vibration and position), pain, and temperature (Jao et al., 2013). Closing the eyes also activates olfaction (smell) and gustatory systems (taste), even in the absence of olfactory or gustatory stimuli (Wiesmann et al., 2006). Closing the eyes activates our interoception network (used for processing the internal state) that includes imagination and memory (Xu et al., 2014). Opening the eyes is associated with stronger ‘‘local ef- ficiency’’ in specific regions of the brain and an increase in specialized information processing. But this comes at a cost. Opening the eyes suppresses interoception. Opening the eyes reduces the synchronicity, global effi- ciency, and integrated connections across visual, somatic, and auditory sensory systems (Jao et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2014). Opening the eyes suppresses imagination, mem- ory, and perception of internal states." Jao, T., Ve ́rtes, P. E., Alexander-Bloch, A. F., Tang, I.-N., Yu, Y.-C., Chen, J.-H., & Bullmore, E. T. (2013). Volitional eyes opening perturbs brain dynamics and functional con- nectivity regardless of light input. NeuroImage, 69, 21–34. Wiesmann, M., Kopietz, R., Albrecht, J., Linn, J., Reime, U., Kara, E., . . . Stephan, T. (2006). Eye closure in darkness ani- mates olfactory and gustatory cortical areas. NeuroImage, 32(1), 293–300. Xu, P., Huang, R., Wang, J., Van Dam, N. T., Xie, T., Dong, Z., . . . Luo, Y. (2014). Different topological organization of human brain functional networks with eyes open versus eyes closed. NeuroImage, 90, 246–255.
Hendrix, C., & Barfield, W. (1996). Presence within virtual environments as a function of visual display parameters. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 5(3), 274–289.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:19
Discussing means of measuring presence – can be objective or subjective measurements and the former are mainly based around tasks.
Collating as ego-presence virtual presence and telepresence because they both imply presence within an environment other than the one the user is physically situated in (the former environment computer-generated, the latter a remote physical environment).
IJsselsteijn, W. A., Freeman, J., & de Ridder, H. (2001). Presence: Where are we? Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 4(2), 179–182.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:19
Presence is "an illusory shift in point of view"
The illusion of "being there" in a virtual environment is enhanced by "more accurate reproductions and/or simulations of reality."
IJsselsteijn, W., & Riva, G. (2003). Being there: The experience of presence in mediated environments. In G. Riva, F. Davide & W. A. IJsselsteijn (Eds.), Being There: Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User Presence in Synthetic Environments. Vol. 5, (pp. 3–16). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 13/02/2019, 16:04
"Characteristics of the medium can be subdivided into media form and media content variables. Both of these are known to have a significant impact on the individual's sense of presence such that, depending on the levels of appropriate, rich, consistent, and captivating sensory stimulation, varying levels of presence can be produced."
Lessiter, J., Freeman, J., Keogh, E., & Davidoff, J. (2001). A cross-media presence questionnaire: The ITC-sense of presence inventory. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 10(3), 282–297.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:19
"Draper et al. (1998) define telepresence as “the perception of presence within a physically remote or simulated site,” which suggests, de facto, that presence is a valid construct in relation to experience of the real (physical) world. This is a contentious issue, a full discussion of which is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is our view that presence is a more useful concept when it is limited to the study of users’ experiences of mediated presentations. Real-world experience can be adequately described in terms of more traditional psychological constructs: such as attention, involvement, and arousal, to name but a few. There seems little to gain from describing people’s everyday experience in terms of presence [...] At the very least, though, real-world experience is useful to presence research insofar as it serves as a benchmark, or standard, against which to subjectively judge levels of presence in mediated environments." Draper, J. V., Kaber, D. B., & Usher, J. M. (1998). Telepresence. Human Factors, 40, 354 –375.
Make a difference between social presence and spatial presence (thus different display configurations required) (Mantovani & Riva 1999). However, they then come back to defining presence as spatial location only.
Summarizing determinants of presence: media form: extent of sensory information provided, user's degree of control in positioning sensory systems in the environment, user's ability to modify the environment media content: theme, narrative or story user characteristics: individual characteristics affecting presence.
Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 3(2).
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 14/08/2020, 16:02
A review (in 1997) of various definitions of presence: "Each represents one or more aspects of what we define here formally as presence: the perceptual illusion of non-mediation."
Loomis, J. M. (1992). Distal attribution and presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1), 113–119.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/09/2018, 17:19
Externalization or distal attribution: "that most of our perceptual experience, though originating with stimulation of our sense organs, is referred to external space beyond the limits of our sensory organs."
"for vision and audition [...] the resulting perceptions are always mediate, never direct, for the central nervous system constructs what is perceived."
"presence and distal attribution beyond the limits of some extending device (probe, teleoperator, virtual display) are not fundamentally different phenomena. Rather, they differ only that true presence occurs when the sensory data support only the interpretation of being somewhere other than where the sense organs are located; whereas, distal attribution to a remote location occurs when the sensory data represent both the remote location and that device or linkage that connects the observer with that remote location."
Acknowledging that the operator of a teleoperation system experiences sensory information from remote/simulated environment and physical environment and that this often conflicts, Loomis makes use of Polyani's notions of subsidiary awareness and focal awareness. Where sensory stimulation from the remote environment is insufficient for true presence, the operator experiences a subsidiary awareness of the physical environment and/or teleoperation system he/she is actually in/using despite a focal awareness of the remote environment. True telepresence is not possible as it is not possible to present the operator with precisely the same sensory stimulation they would receive were they to be actually in the remote environment.
In arguing that distal attribution re telepresence is most clearly felt when the operators have become skilled with the equipment, Loomis suggests that with regard to a lawful relationship between efference and afference, the operator must be able to model this relationship. This 'linkage' becomes transparent with experience and this leads to the externalization of the distal environment.
There is a phenomenal world that can be divided into 'self' and 'nonself' – the physical self is closely tied to the phenomenal self but not necessarily (e.g. phantom limbs). Distal attribution is the process of identifying sensory experience with a phenomenally external space or the nonself. This identification (and thus distal attribution) results when afference (sensory input) is "lawfully related" to efference (motorsensory actions) – e.g. I do something and the sensory feedback I get accords with that action. Loomis hypothesizes that "attribution to self occurs when afference and efference are completely unrelated or independent."

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