more on presence scope

Hi,
The definition that includes

"- Presence - deals with the way the brain constructs the model of reality and self."

... I still don't think it is suitable as the definition of presence research.

The problem is that it is a major quest of neuroscience / psychology etc as a whole. I.e., its scope is too wide.

There is a unique phenomenon that occurs with (some) mediated technologies. Imagine the following thought experiment. You put on a head mounted display that has an adjustable field of view. You start with the field of view at 15 deg (horizontal) and let's say that it has constant 90deg vertical. You gradually adjust the field of view degree by degree, and suddenly there is qualitative change.
Whereas in the early stages you were looking at something, after the change you are somewhere.
Whereas before you saw images of a car moving on the road, now you are standing on the road, the car is coming towards you and you want to get out of the way.

Yes, presence is to do with "the way the brain constructs the model of reality and self" but its domain is "virtual reality" etc, not how the brain works in general. This is a more tractable problem. Of course if we knew how in general the brain works, ie, if we had the "theory of everything" then we would understand presence too. But we don't. Of course what we learn about presence in vr would also help towards the "theory of everthing".

So my point is to have a reasonable scope to the definition, in order to make "presence research" something concrete and specific.

Mel

More on the "balls schema"

Dear colleagues,
sorry for entering this discussion at this late point!

I think, that Guiseppe and others made an important point by postulating that the communication situation (and the whole "presence" experience) must be different if the user believes to be in a social communication situation. This must be a psychologically different experience to experiencing to be in a virtual environment alone. If we should give this experience the label "social presence" or not is something we should discuss. The articles by Rains & Scott (Communication Theory, 2007) and Tanis & Postmes (Computers in Human Behavior, 2007) on anonymity in media communication contain a lot of ideas that might be useful to further study social presence situations in media communication.

Mel Slater wants us to restrict the field of study to virtual reality or virtual environments phenomena as the major communication contexts we should study in the future in order to systematically explore presence. To my opinion, this is a very good advice because at this point of study it seems a good idea to do research more "economically", e.g., by identifiying major communication settings we all want to do research on so that relevant progress can be made as regards to some common results. Also, we have to keep in mind that new media phenomena are those which the EU has up to now been ready to finance. The above mentioned discussion on social presence is in line with this thinking. This does not mean, that we should exclude basic research projects and methodological studies that might be helpful to the topic of presence but were done in the context of traditional media. As long as the results are promising and transferable to presence research, we should include them.

I am not convinced that the topic of presence is dead. All the knowledge the sciences of psychology, sociology and communication can offer to study new media and any other technologically advanced environment supposed to be used by human beings has to be systematically explored in order to give the technical disciplines like engineering, computer science, architecture etc. a helping hand to understand the human user dimension of their technical innovations. We started with the topic "presence", but in my opinion this is only a first step in the right direction. A huge array of topics to research on is waiting for us in the future. And it is important research and not simply Kuhnian "puzzle solving"! Therefore, it is so hard to structure the field.

We should have a symposium with representatives from psychology, sociology and communication research (who are well prepared and ready to present their views of the field and its future in a focused way) at the next conference in Barcelona. To my opinion, it is high time to concentrate on this discussion. I wouldn't be surprised, if at the end of this meeting we are able to describe different presence phenomena under study (with different definitions leading to different research questions), so that the whole field develops a totally new structure, a natural process that I know from other fields of research (no matter, if they are interdiscipinary or stricly disciplinary) too.

Best regards,
Angela Schorr

More on meaning of Presence

Dear Giulio,
I was back today from a conference. I agree a lot on your first statement: the main goal is to understand how the brain constructs the model of reality and self.

Your definition of Hyper Presence is similar to the one of Media Presence introduced by Coelho and colleagues:

http://www.vepsy.com/communication/book7/9_2_Coelho.pdf

This is the abstract:

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment.

The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity.

Apparently we have a common research field - Presence - that deals with the way the brain constructs the model of reality and self.

- Media Presence/Hyper Presence is focused on how techology can simulate the way brain constructs the model of reality and self.

- Inner Presence is is focused on how brain constructs the model of reality and self.

Giuseppe

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Dear Giuseppe,

Excellent: common ground!

Minor refinements:

- Presence - deals with the way the brain constructs the model of reality and self.

-Media Presence/Hyper Presence is focused on how immersive technology can alter the way brain constructs the model of reality and self.

- Inner Presence is is focused on how brain constructs the model of reality and self.

Giulio
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Giulio, We still also need a model of how people construct a model of the other or others that they experience presence with – ie. copresence or social presence!
Ralph

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Dear Giulio, to cope with Ralph's remark, that is surely relevant, you can change "self" with "selves" in the below definitions. It is an easy way not to forget Social Presence research in Presence agenda. Ciao. Giuseppe
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Dear Giuseppe, Ralph, Hmm, I am more binary about this.

There is me, then the rest (the "not me"). The "not me", or reality, includes others as part of the scenery. My brain builds models of other people as well. You may not exist after all...he he.

- Presence - deals with the way the brain constructs the model of
self and reality--including others.

Giulio
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