Copresence With Virtual Humans in Mixed Reality: The Impact of Contextual Responsiveness on Social Perceptions

Alone but not isolated: social presence and cognitive load in learning with 360 virtual reality videos

Introduction

This study aimed to identify any differences in social presence and cognitive load among three types of 360 virtual reality (VR)-based videos lectures. We hypothesized that social presence would be higher when interactions among peers are visible in a 360 VR video lectures while the cognitive load would be also increased.

Methods

A total of 48 college students were randomly assigned to one of the three study groups to view an assigned 360 VR video lecture. The three groups were: (1) an instructor-only video viewing group, (2) a classroom lecture video viewing group, and (3) a classroom lecture and activity video viewing group. The video lectures were differently designed depending on the levels of peer visibility and the interactions between the instructor and peers. The participants watched one of the three types of assigned video lecture and subsequently completed two sets of questionnaires regarding social presence and cognitive load. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted with a planned contrast analysis for the type of video lectures.

Results

We found that, contrary to the hypotheses, students in the group 1 (instructor-only video) showed higher social presence scores than students in the groups 2 and 3. However, no significant differences were found in the cognitive load scores.

Discussion

The results show that 360 VR video lectures with an instructor-only are more effective at enhancing users' social presence than 360 VR video lectures with both the instructor and class-peers. We suggest creating 360 VR video lectures with the presence of the course instructor to offer learners the sense of actually participating in a lecture.

Human Factors at Play: Understanding the Impact of Conditioning on Presence and Reaction Time in Mixed Reality

A prerequisite to improving the presence of a user in mixed reality (MR) is the ability to measure and quantify presence. Traditionally, subjective questionnaires have been used to assess the level of presence. However, recent studies have shown that presence is correlated with objective and systemic human performance measures such as reaction time. These studies analyze the correlation between presence and reaction time when technical factors such as object realism and plausibility of the object's behavior change. However, additional psychological and physiological human factors can also impact presence. It is unclear if presence can be mapped to and correlated with reaction time when human factors such as conditioning are involved. To answer this question, we conducted an exploratory study ($N=60$) where the relationship between presence and reaction time was assessed under three different conditioning scenarios: control, positive, and negative. We demonstrated that human factors impact presence. We found that presence scores and reaction times are significantly correlated (correlation coefficient of -0.64), suggesting that the impact of human factors on reaction time correlates with its effect on presence. In demonstrating that, our study takes another important step toward using objective and systemic measures like reaction time as a presence measure.

Telepresence Social Robotics towards Co-Presence: A Review

Telepresence robots are becoming popular in social interactions involving health care, elderly assistance, guidance, or office meetings. There are two types of human psychological experiences to consider in robot-mediated interactions: (1) telepresence, in which a user develops a sense of being present near the remote interlocutor, and (2) co-presence, in which a user perceives the other person as being present locally with him or her. This work presents a literature review on developments supporting robotic social interactions, contributing to improving the sense of presence and co-presence via robot mediation. This survey aims to define social presence, co-presence, identify autonomous “user-adaptive systems” for social robots, and propose a taxonomy for “co-presence” mechanisms. It presents an overview of social robotics systems, applications areas, and technical methods and provides directions for telepresence and co-presence robot design given the actual and future challenges. Finally, we suggest evaluation guidelines for these systems, having as reference face-to-face interaction.