Influence of personality and individual abilities on the sense of presence experienced in virtual environments

Abstract

There are few studies of the human factors involved in the engagement of presence. The present study aims to investigate the influence of five user characteristics -test anxiety, spatial intelligence, verbal intelligence, personality and computer experience -on the sense of presence in university students when exposed to virtual environments designed to assess their levels of test anxiety. This is the first study to investigate the influence of spatial intelligence on the sense of presence, and the first to use an immersive virtual reality system to investigate the relationship between users' personality characteristics and presence. The results show a greater sense of presence in test anxiety environments than in a neutral environment. Moreover, high test anxiety students feel more presence than their non-test anxiety counterparts, especially in test anxiety environments. Spatial intelligence and introversion also influence the sense of presence experienced by high test anxiety students exposed to emotional virtual environments. Interestingly, each of these user characteristics influences different dimensions of the sense of presence. These results may help to identify new groups of patients likely to benefit from virtual reality therapy.

Individual differences in virtual reality: Are spatial presence and spatial ability linked?

“…Unlike research with desktop systems, research with HMDs has failed to demonstrate the predicted relationship between spatial presence and spatial ability (Alsina-Jurnet & Gutiérrez-Maldonado 2010;Ling et al 2013). Alsina-Jurnet and Gutiérrez-Maldonado (2010) investigated a range of measures that may predict individual differences in experiences of presence.…”

Examination of electrodermal and cardio-vascular reactivity in virtual reality through a combined stress induction protocol

“…Even though the field of VR-based research geared toward clinical application is not a novelty, there is still no direct correspondence of presence and related factors to the level of induced emotional arousal. Although a reinforcing role of realism on the behavioral response is noted in Slater et al (2009) and in full body avatars in Gutiérrez-Maldonado et al (2009), in Volonte et al (2016) an opposite effect is reported. Furthermore, compared to alternatives.…”

“Sense of Presence” in Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

“…17 Fourteen articles are quantitative research, 13,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] and 1 mixed study 34 was conducted between the years of 2007 and 2020. Ten of the 14 quantitative studies are experimental, 13,[21][22][23]26,[29][30][31][32][33] and 2 are observational. 24,25 Studies included are from different disciplines such as health care, engineering, education, and business.…”

“…Other researchers share the same views as Minsky that presence is the psychological and subjective experience of "being there," or the experience of being in one environment even when the person is physically in an another 23,30,[38][39][40][41] or in a mediated environment. 21,24,32,42 It is further considered as the feeling of being in a perceived external world around the self, and this view underlines the emerging of "presence" and "absence" as opposite poles of experience in our relation to the self and the other. Total presence is a complete absorption in the external world (the other).…”

“…28 A vision of presence is a social construction, in which reality is co-constructed in the relationship between actors and their environments through the mediation of physical and cultural artifacts. 21 McCreery et al's 27 (2013) study revealed that participant scores in the domain of agreeableness were a significant predictor of agreeable behavior in the virtual environment. 17 However, except for negative effects (eg, dizziness), presence does not seem to influence behavior.…”