Physiological Reaction as an Objective Measure of Presence in Virtual Environments
Michael Meehan, Frederick P. Brooks · 2001
Virtual environments (VEs) are one of the most advanced human-computer interface to date. A common measure of the effectiveness of a VE is the amount of presence it evokes in users. Presence is commonly defined as the sense of being there in a VE. In order to study the effect that technological improvements such as higher frame rate, more visual realism, and lower lag have on presence, we must be able to measure it. There has been much debate about the best way to measure presence, and we, as presence researchers, have yearned for a measure that is Reliable — produces repeatable results, both from trial to trial on the same subject and across subjects; Valid — measures subjective presence, or at least correlates well with established subjective presence measures; Sensitive — is capable of distinguishing multiple levels of presence; and Objective — is well shielded from both subject bias and experimenter bias. We hypothesize that to the degree that a VE seems real, it will evoke physiological responses similar to those evoked by the corresponding real environment, and that greater presence will evoke a greater response. Hence, these responses serve as reliable, valid, sensitive, and objective measures of presence. We conducted three experiments that support the use of physiological reaction as a reliable, valid,