What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Immersion?
Introduction
‘Immersion’ is a term that’s been used extensively by researchers, marketers, reviewers, and consumers alike in different domains to convey a sense of mental engagement, typically pertaining to a narrative experience such as reading a novel or watching a film. In recent years, with the popularization of virtual reality and new media art industries, it’s also frequently used to convey the experience of sensory envelopment created by technology. In the audio world, it’s the dominating term to describe reproduction systems that provide height information in addition to horizontal during playback. Currently, there’s no consensus on its exact definition or measurement. This generalization of the term without a comprehensive framework of analysis creates confusion for researchers and potential disappointments for consumers. As an attempt to create an overarching framework to define and measure both the contributing factors and the immersive experience itself, this paper will summarize how it’s currently been defined in various domains, make distinctions between immersion other concepts such as transportation, envelopment, and flow, and provide a tentative framework for the discussion of immersion as outlined in Agrawal et al.’s literature review of the term (2019).
Current Definitions in The Study of Films, Games, Virtual Reality, and Acoustics
1. Film
In studies of film viewing, ‘immersion’ is typically used as a variable to investigate the cognitive processes that occur during film viewing. Recent studies often use virtual reality CAVE, 3D, and 2D presentations of a film as variations of immersion (Visch et al., 2010; Rooney et al., 2012). Therefore, it is often defined “in terms of the sensory information the technology provides to the user” that is outside the psychology of an individual (Rooney et al., 2012, p. 409).
2. Games
Rather than being defined as a strictly perceptual concept, immersion in game studies is typically referred to as a psychological experience that occurs during gameplay. It resembles the feeling of engagement, engrossment, or flow, and is typically associated with feeling enjoyment toward the gaming experience (Brown & Cairns, 2004; Thon, 2008). It’s also discovered that immersion as a psychological state can be measured quantitatively, both subjectively and objectively using questionnaires and related tasks (Jannett et al., 2008).
3. Virtual Reality
This is the field where ‘immersion’ is frequently used to describe both perceptual and psychological experiences of engaging in VR. It is acknowledged as a ‘multifaceted construct’ that “involves physical and mental participation and implies getting away from everyday experience, playing a different role or taking on a new identity (Carù & Cova, 2006; Hudson et al., 2019, p. 461).”
4. Immersive Audio
In the landscape of immersive audio, immersion is almost exclusively used to describe reproduction methods such as binaural, object-based audio, or higher-order ambisonic reproduction (Roginska & Geluso, 2017). Immersion level, as defined as “the impression of being submerged into, enveloped or surrounded by the environment” of different systems has been tested by Aspök et al (2016, p. 565).
An Extensive Understanding of Immersion
From the above overview, we can see that Immersion is often viewed in two ways. One refers to an objective experience provided by technology, the other an inner psychological state of absorption. The former can be exemplified by Slater’s definition:
“Let’s reserve the term “immersion” to stand simply for what the technology delivers from an objective point of view. The more the system delivers displays (in all sensory modalities) and tracking that preserves fidelity in relation to their equivalent real-world sensory modalities, the more that is ‘immersive’ (Slater, 2003, p. 1).”
This argument is used to distinguish ‘immersion’ with ‘presence’ where he argues that presence is a human reaction to immersion, defined as the feeling of ‘being there’ whereas immersion should strictly be characterized objectively (Slater, 2003). Nowadays, given the way immersion is used to describe a much larger array of experiences, we need a broader framework for understanding the term.
In Agrawal et al.’s research on immersion terminology, besides being an “objective property of a system/technology”, it’s also characterized “as an individual’s psychological state”. Further, they summarized the contributing factors that can lead to this state, expanding the definitional realm of the term. The first of which is similar to presence, termed as “Subjective Sense of Being Surrounded or Experiencing Multisensory Stimulation (Agrawal et al., 2019, p. 3).” While this is not strictly equated with psychological immersion, it can facilitate the process. The second has to do with the narrative of the experience, if there is one. This can be also understood as “narrative immersion” where “players shift their attention to the narrative structure” and develop empathy towards the characters in the story (Thon, 2008, p. 38). The third is characterized as ‘Absorption when Facing Strategic and/or Tactical Challenges (Agrawal et al., p. 3).’ This is akin to Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, where one obtains an optimal state of performance when facing an adequate balance between challenge and their abilities to overcome it (Csikszentmíhalyi, 1991).
Distinctions of Immersion between Presence, Transportation, and Flow
As concluded by Agrawal et al., immersion should be distinguished from presence, transportation, and flow in the following ways:
Presence
Whereas immersion implies a certain level of mental involvement, presence merely suggests the perceptual experience of being at a different place other than the current physical reality. An example would be one can feel present at a laundromat while listening to a binaural recording, while not feel immersed because of the relatively uneventful nature of the experience.
Transportation
Transportation is very similar to Agrawal et al.’s definition of psychological immersion, only that it’s traditionally associated with literary experiences. Whereas immersion is commonly used to describe a plethora of experiences in other domains. Efforts have been made to distinguish the two, but no adequate conclusions were made (Van Laer et al., 2014; Agrawal et al., 2019). Further studies should be conducted to analyze the correlations and distinctions between narrative transportation to psychological immersion.
Flow
Flow experience is typically associated with an extreme, “all-or-nothing,” and optimal experience (Frochot et al., 2017) whereas immersion can be measured as a graded, either positive or negative experience (Jannett et al., 2008). It can be viewed that immersion to be a subset of experience that may contribute to flow.
A Proposed Definition of Immersion
Based on previous discussions, we need a definition that can account for various interpretations of immersion in different contexts. Agreeing that it’s a highly subjective experience, Agrawal et al. proposed the following definition:
“Immersion is a phenomenon experienced by an individual when they are in a state of deep mental involvement in which their cognitive processes (with or without sensory stimulation) cause a shift in their attentional state such that one may experience disassociation from the awareness of the physical world (Agrawal et al., 2019, p. 5)”
It’s important to note that in this definition, immersion is a mental process, and can be achieved with or without sensory stimulation. This implies that when it comes to achieving immersive experiences, the developmental focus of technology should be on creating discernable differences in perception, rather than on blindly increasing the technical specifications of a system. This potential for technology to illicit immersion is defined as “Immersive Potential” The subject-dependent aspect of immersive experience is defined as “Immersive Tendency.” This is varied according to an “individual’s predisposition to experience immersion” and can be measured through questionnaires (Agrawal et al., 2019, p. 5).
Implications for Future Research
Though an overarching framework of immersion has been provided in Agrawal et al.’s research, the validity of some of the assumptions remains to be tested. Whether or not the experience elicited from narrative transportation or absorption when facing intellectual and/or technical challenge qualifies as immersion requires additional study (Agrawal et al., 2019). More importantly, few studies have accounted for the combinational influence of content, individual tendencies, as well as system/technology’s effect on experiencing immersion. This framework provides a groundwork for such a study. The challenges stand in the subjective nature of the experience. Additional questionnaires that measure a subject’s immersive tendency that also accounts for more complex dimensions such as empathetical reactions to narrative, and/or preferences towards intellectual complexities should be developed and tested in conjunction with a system’s potential to illicit immersion.
Citations
Agrawal, S., Simon, A., Bech, S., Bærentsen, K., & Forchhammer, S. (2019). Defining Immersion: Literature Review and Implications for Research on Immersive Audiovisual Experiences. In 147th AES Pro Audio International Convention. Audio Engineering Society.
Biocca, F., & Levy, M. R. (2013). Communication in the age of virtual reality. Routledge.
Brown, E., & Cairns, P. (2004, April). A grounded investigation of game immersion. In CHI'04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1297-1300).
Carù, A., & Cova, B. (2006). How to facilitate immersion in a consumption experience: Appropriation operations and service elements. Journal of Consumer Behaviour: An International Research Review, 5(1), 4-14.
Csikszentmíhalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience In: New York: HarperPerennial.
Frochot, I., Elliot, S., & Kreziak, D. (2017). Digging deep into the experience–flow and immersion patterns in a mountain holiday. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research.
Jennett, C., Cox, A. L., Cairns, P., Dhoparee, S., Epps, A., Tijs, T., & Walton, A. (2008). Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International journal of human-computer studies, 66(9), 641-661.
Roginska, A., & Geluso, P. (Eds.). (2017). Immersive sound: The art and science of binaural and multi-channel audio. Taylor & Francis.
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Slater, M. (2003). A note on presence terminology. Presence connect, 3(3), 1-5.
Thon, J. N. (2008). Immersion revisited: on the value of a contested concept. Lapland University Press.
Van Laer, T., De Ruyter, K., Visconti, L. M., & Wetzels, M. (2014). The extended transportation-imagery model: A meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of consumers' narrative transportation. Journal of Consumer research, 40(5), 797-817.
Visch, V. T., Tan, E. S., & Molenaar, D. (2010). The emotional and cognitive effect of immersion in film viewing. Cognition and Emotion, 24(8), 1439-1445.