A New Conception of Spatial Presence: Once Again, with Feeling

Recent theories of telepresence or spatial presence in a virtual environment argue that it is a subjective experience of being in the virtual environment, and that it is the outcome of constructing a mental model of the self as being located in the virtual environment. However, current theories fail to explain how the subjective experience of spatial presence emerges from the unconscious spatial cognition processes. To fill this gap, spatial presence is conceptualized here as a cognitive feeling. From this perspective, spatial presence is a feedback from unconscious cognitive processes that informs conscious thought about the state of the spatial cognitive system. Current theorizing on the origins and properties of cognitive feelings is reviewed and applied to spatial presence. This new conception of presence draws attention to the functionality of spatial presence for judgments, decisions, and behavior. By highlighting the distinction between spatial cognitive processes and the subjective feeling of spatial presence, the use of questionnaires is theoretically grounded and legitimized as a method of presence research. Finally, embodied cognition theories are reviewed to identify cues that give rise to spatial presence.

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