Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologies

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion \ud of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there \ud is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. \ud Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 359)

This bibliography lists 164 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during Jan. 1992. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and physiology, life support systems and man/system technology, protective clothing, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, planetary biology, and flight crew behavior and performance

Multimodality in VR: A survey

Virtual reality (VR) is rapidly growing, with the potential to change the way we create and consume content. In VR, users integrate multimodal sensory information they receive, to create a unified perception of the virtual world. In this survey, we review the body of work addressing multimodality in VR, and its role and benefits in user experience, together with different applications that leverage multimodality in many disciplines. These works thus encompass several fields of research, and demonstrate that multimodality plays a fundamental role in VR; enhancing the experience, improving overall performance, and yielding unprecedented abilities in skill and knowledge transfer

Multisensory learning in adaptive interactive systems

The main purpose of my work is to investigate multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration in the design and development of adaptive user interfaces for educational purposes. To this aim, starting from renewed understanding from neuroscience and cognitive science on multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration, I developed a theoretical computational model for designing multimodal learning technologies that take into account these results. Main theoretical foundations of my research are multisensory perceptual learning theories and the research on sensory processing and integration, embodied cognition theories, computational models of non-verbal and emotion communication in full-body movement, and human-computer interaction models. Finally, a computational model was applied in two case studies, based on two EU ICT-H2020 Projects, "weDRAW" and "TELMI", on which I worked during the PhD

Decoding auditory attention to instruments in polyphonic music using single-trial EEG classification

Objective. Polyphonic music (music consisting of several instruments playing in parallel) is an intuitive way of embedding multiple information streams. The different instruments in a musical piece form concurrent information streams that seamlessly integrate into a coherent and hedonistically appealing entity. Here, we explore polyphonic music as a novel stimulation approach for use in a brain–computer interface. Approach. In a multi-streamed oddball experiment, we had participants shift selective attention to one out of three different instruments in music audio clips. Each instrument formed an oddball stream with its own specific standard stimuli (a repetitive musical pattern) and oddballs (deviating musical pattern). Main results. Contrasting attended versus unattended instruments, ERP analysis shows subject- and instrument-specific responses including P300 and early auditory components. The attended instrument can be classified offline with a mean accuracy of 91% across 11 participants. Significance. This is a proof of concept that attention paid to a particular instrument in polyphonic music can be inferred from ongoing EEG, a finding that is potentially relevant for both brain–computer interface and music research

A Biosymtic (Biosymbiotic Robotic) Approach to Human Development and Evolution. The Echo of the Universe.

In the present work we demonstrate that the current Child-Computer Interaction paradigm is not potentiating human development to its fullest – it is associated with several physical and mental health problems and appears not to be maximizing children’s cognitive performance and cognitive development. In order to potentiate children’s physical and mental health (including cognitive performance and cognitive development) we have developed a new approach to human development and evolution. This approach proposes a particular synergy between the developing human body, computing machines and natural environments. It emphasizes that children should be encouraged to interact with challenging physical environments offering multiple possibilities for sensory stimulation and increasing physical and mental stress to the organism. We created and tested a new set of computing devices in order to operationalize our approach – Biosymtic (Biosymbiotic Robotic) devices: “Albert” and “Cratus”. In two initial studies we were able to observe that the main goal of our approach is being achieved. We observed that, interaction with the Biosymtic device “Albert”, in a natural environment, managed to trigger a different neurophysiological response (increases in sustained attention levels) and tended to optimize episodic memory performance in children, compared to interaction with a sedentary screen-based computing device, in an artificially controlled environment (indoors) - thus a promising solution to promote cognitive performance/development; and that interaction with the Biosymtic device “Cratus”, in a natural environment, instilled vigorous physical activity levels in children - thus a promising solution to promote physical and mental health