Understanding Immersion: A Cognitive Process Model

Close-up view of a mannequin head wearing a VR headset.

My notes on this paper I read and several lectures while taking IAT 445: Immersive Environments.

Immersion as a Cognitive Process

Constructive Model of Immersion

The spectator’s mind senses relatively few elements around it and uses this input in concert with prior knowledge to immerse itself in the perception of a constructed (and cohesive) reality.

There’s a two-way interaction between a medium’s affordances for immersion and a spectator’s attention, which exploits the tendency to construct worlds.

Immersion is modelled as a process of the spectator’s mind co-creating the holistic experience of a virtual world suggested by the medium.

Duality of Presence

Features of Immersion

Constraints should be logical, semantic, or cultural to guide actions and ease interpretation.

Changing Bodies and Bodily Resonance

The more realized the immersive environment, the more active we want to be within it (agency).

Presence Subprocesses

Interactivity

Transformative Experiences

Transition 1

When presented with a powerful and novel perceptual experience, an individual has three options: assimilation, accommodation, or rejection. If the experience fits the current worldview, it is assimilated, and no further change occurs. If the experience does not fit the worldview, causing perceptual dissonance, the worldview needs to accommodate the new perspective, leading to a cognitive shift. If the individual cannot accommodate the new perspective, it will be rejected by finding an alternative explanation for the experience.

Transition 2

Cognitive dissonance theory explains the transition from cognitive to behavioural change through the emergence of disequilibrium and the desire to return to equilibrium. If the new worldview is inconsistent with current behaviour, then to resolve the conflict, either the worldview or behaviour must change. Since the worldview has just been adjusted to accommodate the perceptual experience, adjusting the worldview would create a new conflict, so the only way to achieve equilibrium would be to modify one’s behaviour to reflect the new values of the expanded mental model.