Toward a Cognitive Approach of the Subjective Experience of Presence in Virtual Reality

The research study aimed to investigate sense of presence mechanism by comparing the impact of different tasks performed in a virtual environment while controlling for the effect of participants' executive functions and spatial abilities. The independent variable was the Task Type, with active and passive conditions. The dependent variable was the Sense of Presence, assessed through general presence, spatial presence, involvement, and realness. Cognitive Control was included as a covariate, and it comprised inhibition, flexibility, working memory, visuospatial ability, and mental imagery.

The table is organised into three parts: data obtained from the socio-demographic questionnaire, results obtained from tests measuring cognitive abilities, and scores on the scale measuring the sense of presence after completing each task in the virtual environment.

1) Socio-demographic data
IT and Prog: the data corresponds to computer and programming skills. 1 equates to no knowledge, and 7 to very good knowledge
Game: the scores correspond to the number of hours per week spent playing video games, where 7 equates to more than 6 hours of gaming per week.
VR: corresponds to the number of times the person has used a virtual reality device.
W_dead: is a question corresponding to an exclusion criterion, where 0 means that the person has never played the video game The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners.
3D: the person had to indicate whether they had knowledge of 3D modelling, where 1 indicates yes.

2) Cognitive abilities
Each column corresponds to the result obtained after evaluation of a cognitive ability.
Inhib_RT: corresponds to the reaction time obtained in the Flanker Task measuring inhibition.
Flex_RT: corresponds to the reaction time obtained in the Trail Making Test measuring flexibility.
Wrk_Mem_RT and Wrk_Mem_ACC: correspond to the reaction time and accuracy score obtained in the N-back task measuring working memory.
Mtl_Img: corresponds to the score obtained on the ‘Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire’ scale measuring mental imagery, where 5 corresponds to a mental image that is ‘Perfectly realistic, as vivid as real scenery’. The minimum score is 32 and the maximum score is 160.
Mtl_Rot_RT and Mtl_Rot_ACC: correspond to the reaction time and accuracy score obtained in the Mental Rotation task measuring visuospatial ability.

3) Sense of presence
The scale used was the Igroup Presence Questionnaire. Responses ranged from 1 to 7.
To better understand the data, here is an explanation: P_G_A corresponds to the ‘Presence’ score for the ‘General Presence’ sub-dimension after performing the active task.
Thus, SP corresponds to ‘Spatial Presence’, INV to “Involvement”, REAL to ‘Realness’, “A” to Active and “P” to Passive.