| Slater, M., & Garau, M. (2007). The use of questionnaire data in presence studies: Do not seriously likert. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 16(4), 447–456. |
 
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| "Presence in our current work is the extent to which participants respond to virtual sensory data as if it were real, where response ranges from unconscious physiological responses, through behavioral responses, through to feelings, emotions and thought" |
| Slater, M. (2007). If you respond as if it were real, then it is Presence. Starlab, Retrieved September 30, 2010, from http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk ... ater-June07-STARLAB.pdf |
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| Presence occurs in virtual environments when you respond to that environment as if it were real. |
| Slater, M., & Steed, A. (2000). A virtual presence counter. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 9(5), 413–434. |
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| "The issue of presence becomes interesting only when there are competing environments—that is, the individual is receiving and can be aware of stimuli from multiple environments (including internal ones). Presence then determines which of the environments the individual responds to and acts within at any given moment." |
| "We can think of presence as a selector among environments to which to respond, which operates dynamically from moment to moment [...] A fundamental proposal of this paper is that the set of stimuli of the present environment forms an overall gestalt, providing a consistent believable world in itself." |
| Slater, M., & Usoh, M. (1993). Representations systems, perceptual position, and presence in immersive virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 2(3), 221–223. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 18/07/2018, 11:51 |
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| The authors define presence as "the (suspension of dis-) belief that they are in a world other than where their real bodies are located [...] IVEs may be considered as general purpose presence-transformaing machines." |
| Slater, M., Usoh, M., & Steed, A. (1994). Depth of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 3(2), 130–144. |
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| "This paper is concerned with the concept and measurement of presence in virtual environments (VEs) (or "virtual reality")." |
| Explaining what an immersive virtual environment (IVE) is: "It is immersive since it immerses a representation of the person's body (the VB) in the computer-generated environment [...] Immersion can lead to presence." |
- High-quality, high-resolution information should be presented to the participant's sensory organs, in a manner that does not indicate the existence of the devices or displays. We include here Steuer's (1992) notion of vividness, "the ability of a technology to produce a sensorially rich mediated environment."
- The environment that is being presented to the participant should be consistent across all displays.
- The environment should be one with which the participant can interact, including objects and autonomous actors that spontaneously react to the subject.
- The self-representation of the participant, that is the participant's "virtual body," should be similar in appearance to the participant's own body, respond correctly, and be seen to correlate with the movements of the participant.
- The connection between participant's actions and effects should be simple enough for the participant to model over time.
Steuer, J. (1992). Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determining telepresence. Journal of Communication, 42(4), 73–93. |
| Slater, M., & Wilbur, S. (1997). A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): Speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 6(6), 603–616. |
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Immersion is a means of describing the technology which should be:
- Inclusive: the shutting out of physical reality
- Extensive: the number of sensory modalities provided by the technology
- Surrounding: not a limited field but panoramic
- Vivid: resolution and quality of the sensory displays as well as their information content and richness
Additionally, immersion requires:
- a virtual body that is egocentric (i.e. first-person) rather than exocentric
- matching between bodily movements and what is generated by the displays
- a plot, a drama that exists within itself and this includes autonomy of other agents in the VE and interaction allowing the user to effect change in the VE.
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| "Immersion can be an objective and quantifiable description of what any particular system does provide. Presence is a state of consciousness, the (psychological) sense of being in the virtual environment." |
| Presence is a function of immersion that increases as the immersion of the system increases. Nevertheless, the extent and balance between the inclusive, extensive, surrounding, and vivid qualities of the immersive technology depends on the context and the user's perceptual requirements. A VE dealing with an orchestra and its concert hall should have high quality audio whereas the image may be of secondary importance, while users favour different sensory modalities when constructing models of worlds. |
The authors disagree with Ellis (1996) (who suggests that presence serves no purpose for certain tasks in VEs) because Ellis equates presence with realism. The authors suggest that presence does not necessarily require realism.
Ellis, S. R. (1996). Presence of mind: A reaction to Thomas Sheridan's "further musings on the psychophysics of presence". Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 5(2), 247–259. |
| Strawson, P. F. (1971). Individuals: An essay in descriptive metaphysics. London: Methuen. (Original work published 1959). |
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| "Coud there be reidentifiable sound-particulars in the purely auditory world? . . . Could a being whose experience was purely auditory make sense of the distinction between himself and his states on the one hand, and something not himself or a state of himself, on the other? . . . these question are not independent. An affirmative answer to the second entails an affirmative answer to the first. For to have a conceptual scheme in which a distinction is made between oneself or one's states and auditory items which are not states of oneself, is to have a conceptual scheme in which the existence of auditory items is logically independent of the existence of one's states or of oneself. Thus it is to have a conceptual scheme in which it is logically possible that such items should exist whether or not they were being observed, and hence should continue to exist through an interval during which they were not being observed. So it seems that it must be the case that there could be reidentifiable particulars in a purely auditory world if the conditions of a non-solipsistic consciousness could be fulfilled for such a world. Now it might further be said that it makes no sense to say that there logically could be reidentifiable particulars in a purely auditory world, unless criteria for reidentification can be framed or devised in purely auditory terms. And if this is correct, as it seems to be, we have the conclusion that the conditions of a non-solipsistic consciousness can be satisfied in such a world only if we can describe in purely auditory terms criteria for reidentification of sound-particulars." |
| "the true solipsist is rather one who simply has no use for the distinction between himself and what is not himself." |
| von Uexküll, J. (1992). A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica, 89(4), 319–391. |
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| "all that a subject perceives becomes his perceptual world and all that he does, his effector world. Perceptual and effector worlds together form a closed unit, the Umwelt." |
| "The individual cells of the perceptor organ, whatever their activity, remain as spatially separate units. The units of information which they separately convey would also remain isolated, if it were not possible for them to be fused into new units which are independent of the spatial characters of the receptor organ. This possibility does, in fact, exist. The receptor signs of a group of receptor cells are combined outside the receptor organ, indeed outside the animal, into units that become the properties of external objects. This projection of sensory impressions is a self-evident fact. All our human sensations, which represent our specific receptor signs, unite into perceptual cues (Merkmal) which constitute the attributes of external objects and serve as the real basis of our actions. The sensation 'blue' becomes the 'blueness' of the sky; the sensation 'green,' the 'greenness' of the lawn. These are the cues by which we recognize the objects: blue, the sky; green, the lawn." |
| "Our time is made up of a series of moments, or briefest time units, within which the world shows no change. For the duration of a moment, the world stands still. Man's moment lasts 1/18 of a second. We shall see later that the length of a moment varies in different animals." |
"the moment is identical for all sense modalities, since all sensations are accomplished by the same moment sign.
The human ear does not discriminate eighteen air vibrations in one second, but hears them as one sound.
It has been found that eighteen taps applied to the skin within one second are felt as even pressure." |
| "I had taken a young, very intelligent and agile Negro with me from the heart of Africa to Dar-es-Salaam. The only thing which he lacked was a knowledge of European tools. When I bid him climb a short ladder, he asked me: 'How am I to do that, I see nothing but rods and holes?' As soon as another Negro had shown him how to climb the ladder, he could do it easily. From then on, the perceptually given 'rods and holes' held a climbing tone for him, and he recognized them everywhere as a ladder. The receptor image of rods and holes had been supplemented by the effector image of his own action; through this it had acquired a new meaning. The new meaning manifested itself as a new attribute, as a functional or effector tone." |
| "The blind man's world is a very limited one: it extends only as far as he can feel his way with his feet and cane." |
| "Behind all the worlds created by Him, there lies concealed, eternally beyond the reach of knowledge, the subject — Nature." |
| "A vineyard snail is placed on a rubber ball which, carried by water, slides under it without friction. The snail's shell is held in place by a bracket. Thus the snail, unhampered in its crawling movements, remains in the same place. If a small stick is then moved up to its foot, the snail will climb up on it. If the snail is given one to three taps with the stick each second, it will turn away, but if four or more taps are administered per second, it will begin to climb onto the stick. In the snail's world a rod that oscillates four times per second has become stationary. We may infer from this that the snail's receptor time moves at a tempo of three to four moments per second. As a result, all motor processes in the snail's world occur much faster than in ours."
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| "According to information I have received concerning the sound perception of night moths, it makes no difference whether the sound to which the animals are adjusted be the sound manifestation of a bat or one produced by rubbing a glass stopper — the effect is always the same. Night moths which, owing to their light coloring, are easily visible, fly away upon perceiving a high tone, while species which have protective coloration alight in response to the same tone. The same sensory cue has the opposite effect in their case. It is striking how the two opposite kinds of action are governed by a plan. There can be no question of discrimination or purposiveness, since no moth or butterfly has ever seen the color of its own skin. The plan revealed in this instance appears even more admirable when we learn that the artful microscopic structure of the night moth's hearing organ exists solely for this one high tone of the bat. To all else, these moths are totally deaf." |
| Wagner, I., Broll, W., Jacucci, G., Kuutii, K., McCall, R., & Morrison, A., et al. (2009). On the role of presence in mixed reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 18(4), 249–276. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 27/09/2018, 11:10 |
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| Quoting Milgram and Kishino (1994): mixed reality is "the merging of real and virtual worlds somewhere along the virtuality continuum which connects completely real environments to completely virtual ones. It is a sliding scale of complete virtuality on one end (virtual environments) to complete reality on the other (the real world)." (p.250)
Following Gibson, "there is no fundamental difference between the real and artificial environment—both of them are mediated" (p.252) |
| "Presence is a phenomenon of human experience that occurs in the context of technologically mediated perception" |
| Waterworth, J. A., & Waterworth, E. L. (2014). Distributed embodiment: Real presence in virtual bodies. In M. Grimshaw (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (pp. 589–601). New York: Oxford University Press. |
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| "being present in an external environment has its roots in the animal feeling of something happening outside the self rather than from within. In other words, the sense of presence distinguishes self from nonself [...] Presence arises from active awareness of our embodiment in a present world around us." |
| Waterworth, E. L., & Waterworth, J. A. (2003). The illusion of being creative. In G. Riva, F. Davide & W. A. IJsselsteijn (Eds), Being There: Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User Presence in Synthetic Environments Vol. 5, (pp. 223–236). Amsterdam: IOS Press. |
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| experiencing the same data set through different representations and sensory modalities "increases the range of concrete perceptions through which information is experienced. These richer perceptions may then lead to more original concepts." |
| Welch, R. B., Blackmon, T. T., Liu, A., Mellors, B. A., & Stark, L. W. (1996). The effects of pictorial realism, delay of visual feedback, and observer interactivity on the subjective sense of presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 5(3), 263–273. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 17/09/2018, 18:28 |
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"Heeter (1992) has argued for three different kinds of presence: environmental, social, and individual. We believe, howeverm that it is more parsinomnious to view presence as a singel (albeit multidimensional) entity that is influenced by many different variables, all of which can be neatly categorized by Heeter's tripartite system." (Heeter 1992).
Heeter, C. (1992). Being there: The subjective experience of presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(2), 262–271. |
| Westerhoff, J. (2011). Reality: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 20/07/2021, 11:22 |
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Detailing a set of experiments by Libet helping to explain how our brain builds a consciousness of the present and the time delay involved.
- Stimulating the brain directly, an electrical impulse must be applied for at least 500 milliseconds to produce a perception (see, for example Libet 1985). Shorter impulses had no effect neither did increasing the intensity (with shorter times). Sensation can be detected by the brain within 500msecs but the subject is not consciously aware of it (e.g. we can react 'instinctively').
- Stimulate the skin then, 200 milliseconds after, stimulate the brain – the skin stimulation is not perceived but is masked by the brain stimulation. The brain edits past events to give an impression of the 'present'.
- Stimulate the brain then, 200 milliseconds later, stimulate the skin. Brian stimulus is perceived after about 500msecs but the skin stimulus is perceived as being before the brain stimulus. A temporal reordering: "There is no guarantee that the order in which we perceive events actually corresponds to the order of their occurrence" (Westerhoff 2011, p.100).
Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8(4), 529–566.
Westerhoff, J. (2011). Reality: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| Witmer, B. G., & Singer, M. J. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(3), 225–240. |
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| "Presence is defined as the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when physically situated in another [whereas immersion is] "the perception of being enveloped" |
| Presence in a VE does not require completely shifting attention from the physical environment to the VE and humans can experience varying degrees of presence in different environments. The allocation of attentional resources plays a part in the development of presence but is not the whole story. |
| "experiencing presence [...] requires the ability to focus on one meaningfully coherent set of stimuli (in the VE) to the exclusion of unrelated stimuli (in the physical location) [...] Though novel aspects of the VE may attract some attention, presence depends less on their novelty than on how well they are connected within the entire VE stimulus set." |
| "Involvement is a psychological state experienced as a consequence of focusing one's energy and attention on a coherent set of stimuli or meaningfully related activities and events." |
| "Immersion is a psychological state characterized by perceiving oneself to be enveloped by, included in, and interacting with an environment that provides a continuous stream of stimuli and experiences." |
| "Both involvement and immersion are necessary for experiencing presence." |
A number of factors increase presence:
- control factors: degree of control, immediacy of control, anticipation, mode of control, physical environmental modifiability
- sensory factors: sensory modality, environmental richness, multimodal presentation, consistency of multimodal information, degree of movement perception, active search
- distraction factors: isolation, selective attention, interface awareness
- realism factors: scene realism (not necessarily content but consistency and connectedness of sensory stimuli), consistency of information with the objective world, meaningfulness of experience, separation anxiety/disorientation.
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| "Because much of our information typically comes through visual channels, visual influence may strongly influence presence. Information presented via other sensory channels also contributes to the experience of presence, but perhaps to a lesser extent than visual information." |
| Zahorik, P., & Jenison, R. L. (1998). Presence as being-in-the-world. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(1), 78–89. |
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| Writing in 1998: "Current research on presence in virtual reality and teleoperator systems subscribes, in one way or another, to the rationalistic orientation." |
| Re presence research: "it has been shown that much of this research utilizes rationalistic tools: distinctions between subject and object, recourse to mental representations, and atomistic formalization." |
| Re Heidegger's 'concernful action' (in this action, no stable representations of tools etc. – readiness-to-hand where objects are conceived of in terms of their usefuless): "It is therefore crucially important [...] that the potential for concernful action be provided in virtual reality and teleoperation systems in order for presence to result." |
| Relating Gibson to presence, "the perception of self-existence is completely determined by physical stimulation. To the extent that successful action is supported, perceptions of self-existence are veridical [cf 'throwness'] Hence, presence is tied to action in the environment." |
| "Presence is tantamount to successfully supported action in the environment [...] Successfully supported action in the environment is a necessary and sufficient condition for presence [...] When actions are made in an environment, the environment reacts, in some fashion, to the action made. When the environmental response is perceived as lawful, that is, commensurate with the response that would be made by the real-world environment in which our perceptual systems have evolved, then the action is said to successfully support our expectations. Since our knowledge of such environmental response is necessarily gained through perceptual processes, it may be seen that the coupling between perception and action is crucial in determining the extent to which actions are successfully supported. Such ecological perception/action coupling must therefore be ultimately related to presence." [their italics] |
| Zeltzer, D. (1992). Autonomy, interaction, and presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1), 127–132. |
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| "What visual cue should be provided to the HMD wearer, beyond this null-stimulus, so that he or she feels "present" in some environment?" |
| "[discussing the presence brought about by the HMD graphics] the visual field must provide some structured imagery lest the wearer feel immersed in a featureless void" |
| Zeltzer asks "present where and for what purpose" and, in this, prefigures future definitions of presence. |
| "a widely accepted working hypothesis states that using our familiar sensorimotor skills to manipulate virtual objects directly by means of whole-hand input devices, like the VPL DataGlove, contributes to our sense of presence much more than writing programs, twisting knobs, or pushing a mouse to accomplish the same task. Thus the presence dimension [of the AIP cube model] provides a measure of the degree to which input and output channels of the machine and the human participant(s) are matched." |
