The Influence of a Sign System on the Sense of Presence in a Desktop Virtual Environment

In a virtual world, users experience compelling illusions, allowing them to become a part of an electronically generated environment. In the world of Virtual Environments, presence refers to such compelling sense of being in a computer generated environment. In spite of the importance of users\u27 perceptual experience, however, only limited consideration has been given to the experiences users encounter when interacting with the virtual interface. This research is therefore to investigate the impact of interface design on the sense of presence. In particular, this study attempts to examine whether the degrees of presence are enhanced by navigational affordances supported by a sign system. A controlled experiment with between-subject factorial design will be conducted to examine the effects of a sign system on users\u27 perceptual experience. Forty participants will be asked to accomplish two sets of seven comparable tasks (total 14 tasks) with and without a help of signs. Upon completion, participants will be asked to complete a post-test questionnaire on the sense of presence on 1-to-7 Likert type scales. For the two sessions of trial, two virtual universities were constructed with ActiveWorlds (http://www.activeworlds.com). ANOVA repeated measure and correlation analysis will be used for the data analysis

Virtually connected, practically mobile

This is the post-print version of the Chapter. The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2006 SpringerThis chapter addresses a central issue in studies of mobile work and mobile technology – what is the work of mobile workers, and how do they use the resources that they have to undertake this work (i.e. the work they have to do in order to do their work)? In contrast to many of the other papers in this collection, the objective of this chapter is to examine individual mobile work, and not teamwork and co-operation other than where it impacts on the work of individuals. We present data from a study of mobile workers, examining a range of mobile workers to produce a rich picture of their work. Our analysis reveals insights into how mobile workers mix their mobility with their work, home and social lives, their use of mobile technology, the problems – technological and otherwise – inherent in being mobile, and the strategies that they use to manage their work, time, other resources and availability. Our findings demonstrate important issues in understanding mobile work, including the maintenance of communities of practice, the role and management of interpersonal awareness and co-ordination, how environmental resources affect activity, the impact of mobility on family/social relationships and the crossover between the mobile workers’ private and working lives, how preplanning is employed prior to travel, and how mobile workers perform activity multitasking, for example through making use of ‘dead time’. Finally, we turn to the implications of this data for the design and deployment of mobile virtual work (MVW) technologies for individuals and a broader organisational context

From presence to consciousness through virtual reality

Immersive virtual environments can break the deep, everyday connection between where our senses tell us we are and where we are actually located and whom we are with. The concept of 'presence' refers to the phenomenon of behaving and feeling as if we are in the virtual world created by computer displays. In this article, we argue that presence is worthy of study by neuroscientists, and that it might aid the study of perception and consciousness

The Interplay Between Presence and Learning

The highly immersive Virtual reality (VR) headset is gaining popularity in multiple application domains. In the context of learning, it has been proposed to be beneficial by increasing presence and attention in noisy and distracting environments, both factors that are considered important for learning. Despite intensified research efforts in recent years, empirical knowledge of experimental research addressing the link between presence and learning in specific environmental contexts is still rather scarce. In this study following an experimental mixed-method approach, the link between presence and memorization as a particular form of learning is addressed by comparing memorization with a highly immersive VR headset to a less immersive system (desktop screen) in noisy and calm learning environments. Using a 2 (learning location) x 2 (learning device) between-subjects design, 63 participants interacted with one of the two devices in either of the two environments. As expected, VR headset users reported higher presence levels. While participants subjectively evaluated the VR headset as a better device for learning, the memorization test scores were higher for desktop screen users in both calm and noisy environments. Learning location did not show significant effects. Attention distraction and context-dependent learning are discussed with regard to the unexpected results, while implications for practice and future research are discussed

When Windmills Turn Into Giants: The Conundrum of Virtual Places

While many papers may claim that virtual environments have much to gain from architectural and urban planning theory, few seem to specify in any verifiable or falsifiable way, how notions of place and interaction are best combined and developed for specific needs. The following is an attempt to summarize a theory of place for virtual environments and explain both the shortcomings and the advantages of this theory

Assessment of the influence of navigation control and screen size on the sense of presence in virtual reality using EEG

[EN] In the virtual reality field, presence refers to the sense of being there in the virtual world. Our aim in this work is to evaluate the usefulness of the Emotiv EPOC EEG device to measure brain activations due to the sense of presence in a virtual environment (VE), using for the analysis the sLORETA tool. We compare between three experimental conditions: photographs, video and free navigation through a VE. We also compare the differences in the sense of presence due to the visualization of the VE in different screens: a common desktop screen and a high-resolution power wall screen. We monitored 20 healthy subjects, obtaining significant differences between the navigation and video conditions in the activity of the right Insula for the Theta band. We also found a higher activation of the Insula for the Alpha and Theta bands while navigating, when comparing the two screen types. The Insula activation is related to stimulus attention and self-awareness processes, directly related with the sense of presence.This study was funded by Vicerrectorado de Investigacion de la Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, PAID-06-2011, R.N. 1984; by Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia Spain, Project Game Teen (TIN2010-20187) and partially by projects Consolider-C (SEJ2006-14301/PSIC), "CIBER of Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition, an initiative of ISCIII", the Excellence Research Program PROMETEO (Generalitat Valenciana. Conselleria de Educacion, 2008-157) and the Consolider INGENIO program (CSD2007-00012). The work of Miriam Clemente was supported by the Generalitat Valenciana under a VALi+d Grant. The work of Alejandro Rodriguez was supported by the Spanish MEC under an FPI Grant BES-2011-043316.Clemente Bellido, M.; Rodríguez Ortega, A.; Rey, B.; Alcañiz Raya, ML. (2014). Assessment of the influence of navigation control and screen size on the sense of presence in virtual reality using EEG. Expert Systems with Applications. 41(4):1584-1592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2013.08.055S1584159241

The influence of immersion and presence in early stage engineering designing and building

This paper explores the role of a designer's sense of engagement in early stage design. In the field of virtual reality, presence and immersion are standard measures of an individual's sense of engagement and involvement in an activity. High levels of presence might indicate that the designer is highly focused on the work. The central research question is the following: do designers who are more engaged in design activity, as measured by presence and immersive tendency questionnaires, produce better designs? An experiment was conducted to assess presence and immersive tendencies within the context of a hands-on, open-ended design-and-build activity. The results indicated that the designers' sense of immersion and presence ranged widely as well as their sense of frustration and calmness while performing the design activity. It was found that higher levels of presence correlated with either high design performance or low design performance. Lower levels of presence correlated with average design performance. No correlations were found between immersive tendency and design performance. This study suggests that some level of presence can be linked with better design, and it implies that level of presence might serve as an indicator of performance and learning in similar design-and-build activities.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CMMI-1130791

Spatial cognition in virtual environments

Since the last decades of the past century, Virtual Reality (VR) has been developed also as a methodology in research, besides a set of helpful applications in medical field (trainings for surgeons, but also rehabilitation tools). In science, there is still no agreement if the use of this technology in research on cognitive processes allows us to generalize results found in a Virtual Environment (VE) to the human behavior or cognition in the real world. This happens because of a series of differences found in basic perceptual processes (for example, depth perception) suggest a big difference in visual environmental representation capabilities of Virtual scenarios. On the other side, in literature quite a lot of studies can be found, which give a proof of VEs reliability in more than one field (trainings and rehabilitation, but also in some research paradigms). The main aim of this thesis is to investigate if, and in which cases, these two different views can be integrated and shed a new light and insights on the use of VR in research. Through the many experiments conducted in the "Virtual Development and Training Center" of the Fraunhofer Institute in Magdeburg, we addressed both low-level spatial processes (within an "evaluation of distances paradigm") and high-level spatial cognition (using a navigation and visuospatial planning task, called "3D Maps"), trying to address, at the same time, also practical problems as, for example, the use of stereoscopy in VEs or the problem of "Simulator Sickness" during navigation in immersive VEs. The results obtained with our research fill some gaps in literature about spatial cognition in VR and allow us to suggest that the use of VEs in research is quite reliable, mainly if the investigated processes are from the higher level of complexity. In this case, in fact, human brain "adapts" pretty well even to a "new" reality like the one offered by the VR, providing of course a familiarization period and the possibility to interact with the environment; the behavior will then be “like if” the environment was real: what is strongly lacking, at the moment, is the possibility to give a completely multisensorial experience, which is a very important issue in order to get the best from this kind of “visualization” of an artificial world. From a low-level point of view, we can confirm what already found in literature, that there are some basic differences in how our visual system perceives important spatial cues as depth and relationships between objects, and, therefore, we cannot talk about "similar environments" talking about VR and reality. The idea that VR is a "different" reality, offering potentially unlimited possibilities of use, even overcoming some physical limits of the real world, in which this "new" reality can be acquired by our cognitive system just by interacting with it, is therefore discussed in the conclusions of this work