The concept of "presence" used as a measure for ecological validity in driving simulators
Christophe Deniaud, Daniel Mestre, Vincent Honnêt, Benoit Jeanne · 2014
The main contribution of this paper to the Cognitive Ergonomics field is to propose a new approach of the behavioral validity's assessment of driving simulators. In this paper, our ambition is to find a way of measuring "presence" to use it as a measure for ecological validity in driving simulators. The underlying assumption is that a person experiencing a strong sense of presence in the virtual environment will react in this environment as if it would be a real one. We propose to measure "presence" by measuring "attention" toward the driving task". Our objective is to demonstrate that the higher the subject's attention required by the primary driving task will be, the more the spatial presence will be felt. In the experiment we tried to vary "attention" by adding a dual task and by adding traffic and measure driving performance and subjective "presence" (MEC-SPQ; Measurement, Effects, Conditions-Spatial Presence Questionnaire). The main result is a lack of congruence between subjective and behavioral measures.