Intention, Action, Self and Other: An Evolutionary Model of Presence

Abstract

The term "presence" entered in the wide scientifi c debate in 1992 when Sheridan and Furness used it in the title of a new journal dedicated to the study of virtual reality systems and teleoperations: Presence, Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. Following this approach, the term "presence" has been used to describe a widely re-ported sensation experienced during the use of virtual reality. The main limitation of this vision is what is not said. What is presence for? Is it a specifi c cognitive process? To answer to these questions, a second group of researchers considers presence as a broad psychological phenomenon, not necessarily linked to the experience of a medium, whose goal is the control of the individual and social activity. In this chapter we support this second vision, starting from the following broad statements: (a) the psychology of presence is related to human action and its organization in the environment; (b) the psychology of presence is related to the body and to the embodiment process; (c) presence is an evolved process related to the understanding and management of the causal texture of both the physical and social worlds. In the following paragraphs we will justify these claims and underline their relevance for the design and usage of interactive technologies.

Back to the Future of Quantitative Psychology and Measurement: Psychometrics in the Twenty-First Century

“…Thanks to VR, researchers are able to understand and measure several cognitive and emotional states and traits, and even personality traits (Heim, 1993 ; Ryan, 2001 ; Sherman and Craig, 2002 ; Cipresso and Serino, 2014 ; Villani et al, 2016 ; Kane and Parsons, 2017 ). From a technological perspective, VR requires a standard commercial PC capable of 3D visualization, a head-mounted display (HMD) endowed with position trackers and a game controller, such as a joypad (Riva et al, 2015 ). The image changes in real time thanks to the information that the tracker through the computer records from the position and orientation of the users' HMD in the subjects' head.…”

“…Psychologists usually describe VR as “an advanced form of human-computer interface that allows the user to interact with and become immersed in a computer-generated environment in a naturalistic fashion” (Schultheis and Rizzo, 2001 ). In general, the sense of presence , i.e., the feeling of being “inside” the simulated world, is the key element of VR as a communication device (Riva et al, 2014 , 2015 ). In the same way that individuals are consciously “being there,” the feeling of presence in a technologically mediated environment provides a very similar experience; i.e., subjects are not “outside” the synthetic experience, but are “inside” it.…”

Modeling behavior dynamics using computational psychometrics within virtual worlds

“…A key concept when contextualizing behavior within virtual environments is that of presence, or the sense of “being there” (Mantovani and Riva, 1999 ; Riva et al, 2003 ). If an individual immersed in a virtual environment feels like he/she is actually “there,” then he/she will behave in a realistic way, and his/her manifested behaviors will be the macroscopic expression of deeper intentions (Riva et al, 2015 ).…”

Being Present in Action: A Theoretical Model About the “Interlocking” Between Intentions and Environmental Affordances

“…In contrast, Inner Presence theories ( Zahorik and Jenison, 1998 ; Moore et al, 2002 ; Lee, 2004 ; Riva et al, 2011 , 2015b ; Riva and Waterworth, 2014 ) consider sense of presence as a fundamental component of our cognition, which plays a precise role in our everyday life and is not necessarily related to the fruition of interactive media. Riva et al (2011 , 2015b ) proposed a complex model that describes sense of presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon whose central goal is the control of agency and activity, through the unconscious separation of “internal” and “external”. In other words, the experience of presence can be described as the outcome of an intuitive meta-cognitive process that allows us to control our actions through the comparison between intentions and perceptions ( Riva and Mantovani, 2012 ).…”

“…According to Riva et al (2011 , 2015b ), Waterworth and Riva (2014) sense of presence is a unitary feeling, but on the process side it can be divided into three phylogenetically different layers/subprocesses. On the side of Self, these layers are symmetrical to the layers of Self as described by Damasio (2011) .…”