The Interaction Between Individuals’ Immersive Tendencies and the Sensation of Presence in a Virtual Environment

Abstract

Witmer and Singer have developed a questionnaire for presence (PQ) as well as an immersive tendencies questionnaire (ITQ). Their research has shown that ITQ scores are positively correlated with PQ scores. This paper reports on an attempt to replicate these findings in a non-immersive, collaborative setting, by creating one virtual environment designed to engender a high sense of presence in users, and one designed to disrupt and decrease the sense of presence felt by users. The major findings of this attempt were firstly that while there was a difference in the two worlds according to the definition of presence, the PQ did not pick up this difference, and secondly that PQ scores were correlated with ITQ scores only in the so-called “high-presence” environment, implying that Witmer and Singer’s results hold only under certain conditions.