Use of auditory event-related potentials to measure immersion during a computer game

The degree of engagement in a computer game is determined by sensory immersion (i.e. effects of display technology) and challenge immersion (i.e. effects of task demand). Twenty participants played a computer game under two display conditions (a large TV vs. head-mounted display) with three levels of cognitive challenge (easy/hard/impossible). Immersion was defined as selective attention to external (non-game related) auditory stimuli and measured implicitly as event-related potentials (ERPs) to an auditory oddball task. The Immersive Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) was used to capture subjective indicators of immersion. The type of display had no significant influence on ERPs or responses to the IEQ. However, subjective immersion was significantly enhanced by the experience of hard and impossible demand. The amplitude of late component ERPs to oddball stimuli were significantly reduced when demand increased from easy to hard/impossible levels. We conclude that ERPs to irrelevant stimuli represent a valid method of operationalising immersion.

[1]  Stephen H. Fairclough,et al.  Capturing user engagement via psychophysiology: measures and mechanisms for biocybernetic adaptation , 2013, Int. J. Auton. Adapt. Commun. Syst..

[2]  Wei Peng,et al.  Effects of screen size, viewing angle, and players' immersion tendencies on game experience , 2012, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[3]  C D Wickens,et al.  The Event-Related Brain Potential as an Index of Display-Monitoring Workload , 1980, Human factors.

[4]  Maria V. Sanchez-Vives,et al.  How we experience immersive virtual environments: the concept of presence and its measurement * , 2009 .

[5]  Doug A. Bowman,et al.  Virtual Reality: How Much Immersion Is Enough? , 2007, Computer.

[6]  R C Burgess,et al.  Event related potentials I , 1992, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[7]  Marina Schmid,et al.  An Introduction To The Event Related Potential Technique , 2016 .

[8]  A. Kok.  On the utility of P3 amplitude as a measure of processing capacity. , 2001, Psychophysiology.

[9]  Frans Mäyrä,et al.  Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion , 2005, DiGRA Conference.

[10]  Todd C. Handy,et al.  Event-related potentials : a methods handbook , 2005 .

[11]  A. McMahan.  Immersion, Engagement, and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games , 2013 .

[12]  M. Kutas,et al.  Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. , 1980, Science.

[13]  Albert A. Rizzo,et al.  Psychophysiology to Assess Impact of Varying Levels of Simulation Fidelity in a Threat Environment , 2012, Adv. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[14]  U Hegerl,et al.  Event-related potentials: Do they reflect central serotonergic neurotransmission and do they predict clinical response to serotonin agonists? , 2001 .

[15]  Paul A. Cairns,et al.  Not doing but thinking: the role of challenge in the gaming experience , 2012, CHI.

[16]  Barry Peterson,et al.  Quantitative Measures of Presence in Virtual Environments: The Roles of Attention and Spatial Comprehension , 1999, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[17]  H. Jasper.  Report of the committee on methods of clinical examination in electroencephalography , 1958 .

[18]  J. Brehm,et al.  The intensity of motivation. , 1989, Annual review of psychology.

[19]  R. Wright,et al.  Brehm's theory of motivation as a model of effort and cardiovascular response. , 1996 .

[20]  R. Wright,et al.  Refining the Prediction of Effort: Brehm's Distinction between Potential Motivation and Motivation Intensity , 2008 .

[21]  Florence Tyndiuk,et al.  Impact of large displays on virtual reality task performance , 2004, AFRIGRAPH '04.

[22]  E. Donchin,et al.  Performance of concurrent tasks: a psychophysiological analysis of the reciprocity of information-processing resources. , 1983, Science.

[23]  C. C. Duncan,et al.  Event-related potentials in clinical research: Guidelines for eliciting, recording, and quantifying mismatch negativity, P300, and N400 , 2009, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[24]  Yvonne de Kort,et al.  Effects of Sensory Immersion on Behavioural Indicators of Player Experience: Movement Synchrony and Controller Pressure , 2009, DiGRA Conference.

[25]  Gavriel Salvendy,et al.  Effects of different scenarios of game difficulty on player immersion , 2010, Interact. Comput..

[26]  Bruce I. Turetsky,et al.  Event-Related Potential† , 2014 .

[27]  Brigitte Röder,et al.  Slow negative brain potentials as reflections of specific modular resources of cognition , 1997, Biological Psychology.

[28]  M. Posner,et al.  The attention system of the human brain. , 1990, Annual review of neuroscience.

[29]  M. Csíkszentmihályi.  Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York (HarperPerennial) 1990. , 1990 .

[30]  Ningjiu Tang,et al.  How do visual angle and physical screen size affect presence and emotional responses of game players? , 2011, 2011 International Conference on Consumer Electronics, Communications and Networks (CECNet).

[31]  A. Kok.  Event-related-potential (ERP) reflections of mental resource̊s: a review and synthesis , 1997, Biological Psychology.

[32]  a.R.V.,et al.  Clinical neurophysiology , 1961, Neurology.

[33]  Matthew W. Miller,et al.  A novel approach to the physiological measurement of mental workload. , 2011, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[34]  G. Logan,et al.  In search of the point of no return: the control of response processes. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[35]  Brendan Z. Allison,et al.  Workload assessment of computer gaming using a single-stimulus event-related potential paradigm , 2008, Biological Psychology.

[36]  Christa Neuper,et al.  Using auditory event-related EEG potentials to assess presence in virtual reality , 2012, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[37]  R. Näätänen,et al.  Early selective-attention effect on evoked potential reinterpreted. , 1978, Acta psychologica.

[38]  E. Donchin,et al.  P300 and tracking difficulty: evidence for multiple resources in dual-task performance. , 1980, Psychophysiology.

[39]  Craig Hedge,et al.  The Immersive Virtual Environment of the digital fulldome: Considerations of relevant psychological processes , 2012, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[40]  Matthew Lombard,et al.  At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence , 2006 .

[41]  Lennart E. Nacke,et al.  Flow and immersion in first-person shooters: measuring the player's gameplay experience , 2008, Future Play.

[42]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. , 1977 .

[43]  C D Wickens,et al.  Assessment of pilot performance and mental workload in rotary wing aircraft. , 1993, Ergonomics.

[44]  S Sutton,et al.  Quantitative evoked potential correlates of the probability of events. , 1970, Psychophysiology.

[45]  J. Freeman,et al.  Aroused and Immersed: The Psychophysiology of Presence , 2000 .

[46]  Paul A. Cairns,et al.  Effect of touch-screen size on game immersion , 2012, BCS HCI.

[47]  J. Polich.  Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b , 2007, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[48]  Risto N t nen.  Attention and brain function , 1992 .

[49]  P. Holcomb,et al.  Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly , 1992 .

[50]  Paul A. Cairns,et al.  Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[51]  Hans Helmut Kornhuber,et al.  An electrical sign of participation of the mesial ‘supplementary’ motor cortex in human voluntary finger movement , 1978, Brain Research.

[52]  U. Erdmann,et al.  Auditory probe sensitivity to mental workload changes - an event-related potential study. , 2001, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[53]  Jenova Chen,et al.  Flow in games (and everything else) , 2007, CACM.