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Our sense of presence in the real world helps regulate our behaviour within it by telling us about the status and effectiveness of our actions. As such, this ability offers us practical advantages in dealing effectively with the world. It is also an automatic or intuitive response to where and how we find ourselves in that it does not require conscious thought or deliberation. In contrast, the experience of presence or immersion in a movie, game or virtual environment is not automatic but is the product of our deliberate engagement with it, an engagement which first requires a disengagement or decoupling with the real world. Of course, we regularly decouple from the real world and embrace other, possible worlds every time we daydream, or engage in creative problem solving or, most importantly, for the purposes of this discussion, when we make- believe. We propose that make-believe is a plausible psychological mechanism which underpins the experience of mediated presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presence research can tell us why we feel present in the real world and can experience presence while using virtual reality technology (and movies and games) but has strikingly less to say on why we feel present in the scenes described in a book. Just how is it that the wonderful tangible detail of the real world or the complexity of digital technology can be matched and even surpassed by a story in a paperback book? This paper identifies a range of potential neurological solutions to this problem (and the 'real world' and 'dream' problems for good measure). We consider Jeannerod's neural simulation of action, Grush's emulation theory of representation and Rizzolatti's work on mirror neurons as being candidate solutions to the 'book problem'. We conclude by observing that these potential solutions further underline the 'purpose' of presence is to act in the world whether it is real, virtual or solely in our imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engagement is important to the success of applications, systems and artefacts as diverse as robotics, pedagogy, games, interactive installations, and virtual reality applications. Yet engagement has proved to be remarkably difficult to define as it can take many forms, so many that it is difficult to isolate what these different instantiations have in common. Instead of pursuing an empirical perspective, the human side of engagement, namely, involvement is considered from a broadly Heideggerian perspective. As Heidegger has a deserved reputation for philosophical obscurity, all of the concepts adopted from his work are mapped onto the more familiar languages and vocabularies of psychology, human-computer interaction and cognitive science. It is argued that technology is engaging and our response to it is to be involved (with it). This resulting involvement- engagement dyad is thus an explicitly holistic account recognising roles for affordance, purpose, identity, affect and embodiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triangulation is the means by which an alternate perspective is used to validate, challenge or extend existing findings. It is frequently used when the field of study is difficult, demanding or contentious and presence research meets all of these criteria. We distinguish between the use of hard and soft triangulation—the former emphasising the challenging of findings, the latter being more confirmatory in character. Having reviewed a substantial number of presence papers, we conclude that strong triangulation is not widely used while soft triangulation is routinely employed. We demonstrate the usefulness of hard triangulation by contrasting an ontological analysis of in-ness with an empirical study of (computer) game playing. We conclude that presence research would be well served by the wider use of hard triangulation and for the reporting of anomalous and ill-fitting results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recreating real places--as distinct from virtual spaces or environments--using virtual reality technology raises a series of significant challenges. Fortunately there is a large body of existing research into the experience of place which might reasonably contribute to our understanding of the task. This paper reviews key aspects of the place literature, relates them to the concept of presence, and then illustrates their application in the context of virtual reality. We conclude that some modification of existing theories of sense of place is necessary for this context and outline proposals for further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consideration of eventual context of use is crucially important for the success of virtual environments destined for real-world organizations, yet it is frequently absent from accounts of the design of such applications. We describe how contextual requirements have influenced the design of a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) to support the delivery of safety-critical training, and suggest how context and purpose of use may be a significant factor in the sense of presence and engagement in both virtual and physical simulated environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the special issue of the journal is presented in which the editors discussed topics such as the treatment of the authenticity of the virtual environments, the digital tourism, and the international standards for intellectual integrity.