Human Factors at Play: Understanding the Impact of Conditioning on Presence and Reaction Time in Mixed Reality

A prerequisite to improving the presence of a user in mixed reality (MR) is the ability to measure and quantify presence. Traditionally, subjective questionnaires have been used to assess the level of presence. However, recent studies have shown that presence is correlated with objective and systemic human performance measures such as reaction time. These studies analyze the correlation between presence and reaction time when technical factors such as object realism and plausibility of the object's behavior change. However, additional psychological and physiological human factors can also impact presence. It is unclear if presence can be mapped to and correlated with reaction time when human factors such as conditioning are involved. To answer this question, we conducted an exploratory study (N = 60) where the relationship between presence and reaction time was assessed under three different conditioning scenarios: control, positive, and negative. We demonstrated that human factors impact presence. We found that presence scores and reaction times are significantly correlated (correlation coefficient of −0.64), suggesting that the impact of human factors on reaction time correlates with its effect on presence. In demonstrating that, our study takes another important step toward using objective and systemic measures like reaction time as a presence measure.