Presence: Form, Content and Consciousness

In this chapter we present a rather wide-ranging perspective on presence as a central, characterizing feature of conscious mental life. After clarifying what we mean by presence in the first section, Sect. 3.2 discusses the implications of this for measurement. In Sect. 3.3, we consider the importance of media form for the sense of presence, before moving on in Sect. 3.4 to the relationship between presence and the sense of self considered in evolutionary terms. Section 3.5 deals specifically with attention, viewing presence as a reflection of attentional focus. Our aim is to convey the big picture about presence: what it is, what it’s for, how it evolved, what it is determined by and the effects it can have.

[1]  Paolo Bartolomeo,et al.  The Relationship Between Visual Perception and Visual Mental Imagery: A Reappraisal of the Neuropsychological Evidence , 2002, Cortex.

[2]  D. Vandewalle,et al.  Goal orientation and goal content as predictors of performance in a training program , 1999 .

[3]  Giuseppe Riva,et al.  On feeling (the) present: An evolutionary account of the sense of presence in physical and electronically-mediated environments , 2010 .

[4]  Thomas Metzinger.  The Hint Half Guessed , 1999 .

[5]  Jonathan Steuer,et al.  Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence , 1992 .

[6]  Eva Lindh Waterworth,et al.  Presence as a Dimension of Communication : Context of Use and the Person , 2006 .

[7]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  Synaesthesia? A window into perception, thought and language , 2001 .

[8]  M. Press.  Presence : teleoperators and virtual environments. , 2014 .

[9]  Gregory M. P. O'Hare,et al.  Presence Equation: An Investigation into Cognitive Factors Underlying Presence , 2003, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[10]  Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn,et al.  Using Behavioral Realism to Estimate Presence: A Study of the Utility of Postural Responses to Motion Stimuli , 2000, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[11]  A. Damasio.  The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , 1999 .

[12]  Eva Lindh Waterworth,et al.  Focus, Locus, and Sensus: The Three Dimensions of Virtual Experience , 2001, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[13]  Jack M. Loomis,et al.  Distal Attribution and Presence , 1992, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[14]  C. Guilleminault,et al.  Prevalence and pathologic associations of sleep paralysis in the general population , 1999, Neurology.

[15]  Michael G. Flaherty,et al.  A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time , 1999 .

[16]  B. Baars.  A cognitive theory of consciousness , 1988 .

[17]  J. Freeman,et al.  When presence and emotion are related, and when they are not , 2005 .

[18]  H. Eysenck.  Biological Basis of Personality , 1963, Nature.

[19]  Eva Lindh Waterworth,et al.  Being and Time: Judged Presence and Duration as a Function of Media Form , 2003, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[20]  Rosa María Baños,et al.  The Third Pole of the Sense of Presence: Comparing Virtual and Imagery Spaces , 2005, PsychNology J..

[21]  Daniel Fallman,et al.  The Reality Helmet : Transforming the Experience of Being-in-the-World , 2003 .

[22]  Raymond J. Dolan,et al.  Feeling the neurobiological self , 1999, Nature.

[23]  Matthew T. Jones.  Presence as External Versus Internal Experience: How Form, User, Style, and Content Factors Produce Presence from the Inside , 2007 .

[24]  M A Schier,et al.  Changes in EEG alpha power during simulated driving: a demonstration. , 2000, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[25]  Eva Lindh Waterworth,et al.  Presence as Performance: the mystique of digital participation , 2001 .

[26]  H. Heuer,et al.  Perspectives on Perception and Action , 1989 .

[27]  Giuseppe Riva,et al.  Intention, Action, Self and Other: An Evolutionary Model of Presence , 2015, Immersed in Media, Telepresence Theory, Measurement & Technology.

[28]  Kristina Höök,et al.  Designing Information Spaces: The Social Navigation Approach , 2003, Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

[29]  S. Pinker.  How the Mind Works , 1999, Philosophy after Darwin.

[30]  R. Janoff-Bulman,et al.  The impact of trauma on meaning: From meaningless world to meaningful life. , 1997 .

[31]  M. Goodale,et al.  Separate visual pathways for perception and action , 1992, Trends in Neurosciences.

[32]  N. Humphrey.  A History of the Mind , 1992 .

[33]  Eva Lindh Waterworth,et al.  Presence and Absence in Education VR: The Role of Perceptual Seduction in Conceptual Learning , 2000 .

[34]  Andreas Lund,et al.  Experiential Design of Shared Information Spaces , 2003, Designing Information Spaces.

[35]  E. Tzimas,et al.  Objective Presence Measures through Electric Brain Activity , 2004 .

[36]  Mel Slater,et al.  Presence and The Sixth Sense , 2002, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[37]  A. Damasio.  Descartes' error: emotion, reason, and the human brain. avon books , 1994 .

[38]  Suzanne M. Roche,et al.  Absorption: Nature, assessment, and correlates. , 1990 .

[39]  Eva Lindh Waterworth,et al.  The Exploratorium: An Environment To Explore Your Feelings , 2003, PsychNology J..

[40]  Frank Biocca,et al.  Visual Touch in Virtual Environments: An Exploratory Study of Presence, Multimodal Interfaces, and Cross-Modal Sensory Illusions , 2001, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[41]  Giuseppe Riva,et al.  The Layers of Presence: A Bio-cultural Approach to Understanding Presence in Natural and Mediated Environments , 2004, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[42]  Leslie G. Ungerleider.  Two cortical visual systems , 1982 .

[43]  Frank Biocca,et al.  Communication within virtual reality: Creating a space for research. , 1992 .

[44]  A. Clark.  Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again , 1996 .

[45]  John Waterworth,et al.  Creativity and Sensation: The Case for Synaesthetic Media , 1997 .

[46]  Tilo Hartmann,et al.  Personality-related differences in subjective presence , 2004 .

[47]  R. Gregory.  Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing , 1969 .

[48]  Carrie Heeter,et al.  Reflections on Real Presence by a Virtual Person , 2003, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[49]  Benjamin White,et al.  Perceptual Findings with the Vision-Substitution System , 1970 .

[50]  Holger Regenbrecht,et al.  Measuring the Sense of Presence and its Relations to Fear of Heights in Virtual Environments , 1998, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[51]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought , 1999 .

[52]  Sandra Blakeslee,et al.  Phantoms in the Brain , 1998 .