Immersive Interfaces for Engagement and Learning: Cognitive Implications

International audienceImmersive Virtual Environments are distinct from other types of multimedia learning environments. But, if immersion defined the subjective impression that one is participating in a comprehensive and a realistic experience, immersive-ness is generally defined only from a systemic point of view (e.g., capacity to track users' movements, facial expressions and gestures, quality of appearance, combination of multi-sensory information, design of the virtual world). Moreover, nowadays, it does not exist a robust theoretical framework to describe and to predict immersive-ness from a user-point of view. So this paper is aiming to assume that (a) immersive-ness should be defined from a cognitive user point of view, and that (b) the cognitive architecture called MHP/RT (for Model Human Processor with Realtime Constraints) is relevant to understand and to predict immersive-ness. After a presentation of the MHP/RT model and the distributed memory system related to conscious and unconscious processes, we present the conditions necessary to produce an "immersive experience" for the user, and a case study is described as an example. Theoretical and method-ological perspectives are discussed

Multi-Dimensional Memory Frames and Action Generation in the MHP/RT Cognitive Architecture

AbstractThe main theme of this paper is to provide a cognitive architecture, MHP/RT (Model Human Processor with Realtime Constraints), that is appropriate for describing the idea, “The agent would not be getting an informational input or a reinforcement, but the inputs would be better described as perturbations on a self-organizing complex systems”, as stated in the call for the workshop, Enaction, Complex Systems and Cognitive Architectures. MHP/RT describes a cyclic process of action selection and memorization while one lives in the world, and the memory is gradually structured as multi-dimensional frames as one interacts with the environment. Behavioral processing constraints are imposed by conscious and unconscious processes, and behavior must be synchronized with the ever-changing external and internal environments. This paper provides a brief explanation of MHP/RT and multi-dimensional memory frames, followed by how memory is structured as one develops