The Virtual Ante-Room: Assessing Presence through Expectation and Surprise
Mel Slater, Anthony J. Steed, John McCarthy, Francesco Marinelli · 1998
We describe an experiment where subjects entered a virtual replica of the laboratory in which the experiment was taking place. They then moved through a door to a new virtual location and carried out the main experimental task, and then returned to the virtual lab. In the real lab they had learned to search for box-shaped objects and point at a telephone whenever it rang. In the virtual lab, additional colouredboxes were introduced, and although the virtual phone position was not moved, the real phone of which it was a replica was moved. On exit from the virtual to the real laboratory, subjects were asked about their degree of surprise that the additional coloured boxes were not there and that the phone had been moved. This was in the context of an experiment to assess the influence of body movement on presence. This paper reportson the relationship between this surprise factor and the presence reported for the main part of the experiment. It was found that the surprise factor and reported presence were significantly positively correlated, suggesting a new approach towards a behavioural measure of presence.