A between-group experiment was carried out to assess whether two different presence questionnaires can distinguish between real and virtual experiences. One group of 10 subjects searched for a box in a real office environment. A second group of 10 subjects carried out the same task in a virtual environment simulating the same office. Immediately after their experience subjects were given two different presence questionnaires in randomised order: the Witmer and Singer Presence (WS), and the questionnaire developed by Slater, Usoh and Steed (SUS). The paper argues that questionnaires should be able to pass a ‘reality test’ - whereby under current conditions the presence scores should be higher for real experiences than for virtual ones. Nevertheless, there was only a marginally higher mean presence score for the SUS score for the real compared to the virtual, and no significant difference at all in the case of the WS mean score. It is concluded that though such questionnaires may be useful when all subjects experience the same type of environment, their utility is doubtful for the comparison of experiences across environments - such as immersive virtual compared to real, or desktop compared to immersive virtual. (Author/publisher)
Abstract