Identifying Discrepancies Between Measurements of Visual, Felt Presence and Tactile, Judged Presence
Abstract
Unlike other screen-based technologies such as computer monitors, virtual reality (VR) systems allow the user to feel a sense of presence – the sense that they are actually situated within the surrounding virtual environment. Although the foundational experience of existing within a physical environment goes far beyond aspects of vision, our study is the first, to our knowledge, to operationalise and measure different facets of the multidimensional concept of the SOOP, ranging from indirect, trial-by-trial measures of reaction times and accuracy to higher-order aspects of presence judgements such as their trial-by-trial metacognitive efficiency, and to modality-specific and modality-general global (i.e. across many trials), retrospective self-report measures. We primarily hypothesised that whilst multisensory stimulation is the most important factor in the creation of presence, unisensory touch will be a greater causative factor in the creation of presence than unisensory vision. 44 participants completed an implicit reaction-time task (reacting to target stimuli) and an explicit metacognitive task (rating confidence in object presence). We manipulated sense type (unisensory vs multisensory), sensory modality (vision vs touch) and temporal order (e.g., touch-first vs. vision-first). Results indicated that multisensory integration significantly enhanced metacognitive efficacy, accuracy and reaction speeds compared to unisensory conditions. However, a key dissociation emerged between unisensory modalities. While participants reacted faster to visual stimuli, they achieved higher perceptual accuracy with tactile stimuli, with participants retrospectively rating touch as feeling significantly more "real" than vision. These findings support the notion that realtime "felt" presence and retrospective "judged" presence may be caused by distinct factors.
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BibTeX
@misc{singleton2026identifying,
title = {{Identifying Discrepancies Between Measurements of Visual, Felt Presence and Tactile, Judged Presence}},
author = {Oliver Singleton and Marianna Obrist and Aikaterini Fotopoulou},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/v7fdc_v5},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/v7fdc_v5/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Identifying Discrepancies Between Measurements of Visual, Felt Presence and Tactile, Judged Presence
AU - Oliver Singleton
AU - Marianna Obrist
AU - Aikaterini Fotopoulou
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/v7fdc_v5
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/v7fdc_v5/
AB - Unlike other screen-based technologies such as computer monitors, virtual reality (VR) systems allow the user to feel a sense of presence – the sense that they are actually situated within the surrounding virtual environment. Although the foundational experience of existing within a physical environment goes far beyond aspects of vision, our study is the first, to our knowledge, to operationalise and measure different facets of the multidimensional concept of the SOOP, ranging from indirect, trial-by-trial measures of reaction times and accuracy to higher-order aspects of presence judgements such as their trial-by-trial metacognitive efficiency, and to modality-specific and modality-general global (i.e. across many trials), retrospective self-report measures. We primarily hypothesised that whilst multisensory stimulation is the most important factor in the creation of presence, unisensory touch will be a greater causative factor in the creation of presence than unisensory vision. 44 participants completed an implicit reaction-time task (reacting to target stimuli) and an explicit metacognitive task (rating confidence in object presence). We manipulated sense type (unisensory vs multisensory), sensory modality (vision vs touch) and temporal order (e.g., touch-first vs. vision-first). Results indicated that multisensory integration significantly enhanced metacognitive efficacy, accuracy and reaction speeds compared to unisensory conditions. However, a key dissociation emerged between unisensory modalities. While participants reacted faster to visual stimuli, they achieved higher perceptual accuracy with tactile stimuli, with participants retrospectively rating touch as feeling significantly more "real" than vision. These findings support the notion that realtime "felt" presence and retrospective "judged" presence may be caused by distinct factors.
ER -