Immersion and Presence

When considering the concept of immersion, it was also important to consider the concept of presence. Presence and immersion have had a fairly long history of being mislabeled (Schubert, Friedmann, & Regenbrecht, 1999a). Many followed the logical distinction made by (Slater & Wilbur, 1997) where presence represented the subjective psychological feeling of “being in a space” and immersion represented the objective

technology which allowed for presence to occur. Baños et al. (2004) agreed with the original statement made by Schubert, Friedman, and Regenbrecht (2001) and pointed out it would be “misleading to assume a one-to-one relationship between immersion and presence” (p. 735). As Schubert et al. (2001) further explained this idea being due to “cognitive processes

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up how the relationship between immersion and presence should be considered, with

immersion influencing presence. To better gauge how this influence occurs, it was important to consider the theoretical links between immersion and presence.

At the theoretical level, presence and immersion were related through two different concepts: involvement and engagement. Schubert et al. (1999a) found that involvement linked to presence through attention and awareness processes. Sherman and Craig (2003) in Gorini et al. (2011) furthered the notion of the relationship “narratives are responsible for mental immersion, through which users can be deeply engaged and

involved in the experience, increasing their sense of mediated presence” (p. 100). From the narrative stemmed motivation which, became the causal factor between immersion and engagement. From this perspective, the relationship between presence and immersion could be seen as a product of other mediating variables, specifically those of involvement and engagement. This study looked at the influence of immersion on presence and, explored the theoretical relationship between immersion and presence through mediating variables.

Thinking first about immersion and presence and the initial exploration, each construct was defined in terms of less abstract concepts. Immersion was defined as a dichotomy consisting of psychological and perceptual immersion (Sherman & Craig, 2003). Presence was defined as consisting of a spatial constructive and attentional allocation (Schubert, Friedmann, & Regenbrecht, 1999a). From these definitions, the distinction between the two constructs could be derived. Both perceptual and

psychological immersion were each split into different dimensions: sensory dimensions and involvement, attention, and affect dimensions respectively. From this split of the two

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types of immersion, the use of narrative was found to increase motivation which

establishes engagement. For presence, attentional allocation was found to be formed from involvement which establishes a sense of presence (Lessiter, Freeman, Keogh, &

Davidoff, 2001). These two findings for each of the concepts called for a need to look at the relationship between engagement and involvement.

Wirth et al. (2007) explained involvement as being a “motivation-related meta- concept” containing numerous forms of interaction with a simulated environment. Involvement itself was considered the “active and intensive processing of the mediated world” (Wirth, et al., 2007, p. 513). The ‘intensive processing’ was what Wirth et al. (2007) used to distinguish involvement from spatial presence. Intensive processing referred to the level of information processing occurring: thinking, interpreting, elaborating, appraising and assigning relevance to content within the media (Wirth, 2006). Schubert et al. (1999a) further added to the definition of involvement by

suggesting it was linked to both awareness and attention processes of users thus, adding to the idea of active information processing. Witmer, Jerome, and Singer (2005) supported this view by stating “involvement is a psychological state experience as a consequence of focusing one’s mental energy and attention on a coherent set of stimuli or meaningfully related activities or events” (p. 299). In all of the definitions, no direct relationship existed between involvement and immersion, only indirect ones. As such, to see the connection back to immersion, a similarly related concept, engagement, should be defined differently.

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Dede (2009) suggested that immersion influenced engagement in virtual

environments. This inferred a relationship between immersion and engagement. Sherman and Craig (2003) further noted the relationship between immersion and engagement by stating that immersion indicated a level of engagement while engagement indicated the success of communicating the virtual environment to the user (p. 383). Frequently referred to in education, “engagement predicts important outcomes (e.g. learning,

development) and because it reveals underlying motivation” (Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004, p. 148). Also, having a link to motivation suggested a possible

relationship between engagement and involvement. Lessiter et al. (2001) suggested engagement as a measure of both a user’s interest and involvement in the virtual environment’s content along with the user’s general enjoyment of the experience (p. 293). This understanding of engagement inferred that involvement was necessary for engagement to occur. Further presenting this line of thinking, Reeve et al. (2004) explained “engagement refers to the behavioral intensity and emotional quality of a person’s active involvement during a task” (p. 147). Considering the relationship between engagement and involvement as one leading to the other, it was possible to think of involvement being nested within engagement. As involvement was found to be nested in engagement with user interest, the link between presence and immersion was seen.

Murray, Fox, and Pettifer (2007) indicated that involvement and engagement were related through the concept of absorption. Absorption was defined as “a disposition for having episodes of ‘total’ attention that fully engage one’s representational (i.e.,

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p. 268). Based on this definition, absorption links involvement and engagement. Murray et al. (2007) established the indirect relationship between presence and absorption stating that involvement was coupled with absorption, forming a sense of presence. This addition of absorption to the model of involvement and engagement added to the relationship between presence and immersion; theoretically linking the two constructs together, see Fig. 5.

Figure 5: The relationship between involvement and engagement.

Dalgarno and Lee (2010) established that immersion (e.g. perceptual) was a product of ‘fidelity’ and ‘interactive capabilities’ and presence was a product of immersion. This particular explanation fell in line with this study, suggesting that interactivity played a partial role in linking immersion and presence together. Considering this link between immersion and interactivity, the relationship between immersion and presence can be viewed in light of contributions made by interactivity. Wirth et al. (2007) cautioned though that “spatial presence can be enriched by” but not dependent on perceptual immersion (p. 496). This again indicated that interactivity may play a role in the relationship between immersion and presence.

To start, perceptual immersion was split into different sensory dimensions (i.e. visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile). From those dimensions, visual immersion was chosen for this study as it is a critical aspect of virtual reality systems. Specifically for

Involvement Engagement

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this study, visual immersiveness was operationalized as stereoscopy and field of view (FOV).