Conceptual priming as a determinant of presence in virtual environments

  • Authors:

  • David Nunez;Edwin Blake

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa;University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Computer graphics, virtual Reality, visualisation and interaction in Africa
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Many presence studies show the importance of display variables in determining presence. However, very little empirical evidence exists to support the notion of "the suspension of disbelief" or other psychological determinants of presence. We argue from a cognitive presence perspective that presence can be considered as an extension of perception, a process which is known to be significantly affected by the perceiver's mental state. We support our argument by presenting the results of a large study (n=103) in which users were conceptually primed by reading a booklet either related to or unrelated to a VE and then were left to explore that VE with either a high quality or low quality display. We found a significant interaction effect between display quality and priming, showing that the mental state of the user sets a context which affects their experience of presence as measured using two scales. We conclude that, like perception, presence does not simply occur as a consequence of sensory input only, but that it is a constructive process in which the VE user creates an experience using both sensory and psychological inputs.