This study explored how telepresence could be affected by stimuli from reality that distracts people while they are watching television. The sample comprised of 36 undergraduate and graduate students from a university in South Korea (age range: 18–38 years,
At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), it was predicted that televisions (TVs) would remain as a core home appliance within the near future because of their higher picture quality via larger screens. Ever since their development in the 19th century, TVs have continually evolved, first to color TVs, then to digital TVs, and now to internet-enabled TVs that can utilize various applications.
TVs are anticipated to remain the most popular home appliance for entertainment media [
TP has been variously defined and given meanings based on the particular situation of diverse media [
In the same context, TP is defined as a feeling of being in another environment (i.e., virtual environments such as those of games, movies, and TV programs) created via information and communication technology (ICT) [
In an experiment, Vettehen et al. [
Tijus et al. [
Additionally, another study [
In this study, we refer to the feeling of being in the virtual environment as TP and the feeling of being in the physical environment as real presence (RP). Viewers experience TP through visual and sound stimulation from TV screens and speakers. Each of the sensory stimuli is received by the viewer’s sensory-motor system, where the TV stimuli override the sensory stimuli from reality and impact the viewer’s sensory system. This in turn provides the viewer with the feeling of TP and causes the viewer to regard the virtual environment as the existing real-world space. Thus, we may consider that TP and RP are negatively correlated, wherein the enhancement of TP weakens RP and vice versa.
So far, research on TV UX has mainly focused on factors that directly increase the level of TP, with barely [
There has been research on how components such as screen size, resolution, and curvature are related to UX [
Thus, we arrived at two research questions: May stimuli outside the virtual environment decrease the level of TP? May TV bezel’s width decrease the level of RP and indirectly increase the level of TP?
Researchers have reported that in the perceptual system of TV viewers, the perceptual stimulation of the virtual environment generated by TV competes with the perceptual stimulation of the real-world environment in which the viewer exists [
Through the concept “breaks in presence,” Slater and Steed [
Sheridan [
In addition to the aforementioned points, TV specifications such as screen length, width, and bezel are factors that can be visually perceived while viewing TVs. A bezel is a component of TVs belonging to reality, so the bezel’s physical presence is expected to play a role in decreasing the viewer’s level of TP. Since a bezel’s physical presence is an interrupting factor, RP is expected to increase with an increase in the width of the bezel, while TP is expected to change inversely.
Based on the literature and our research questions, we framed two hypotheses to be tested.
In our study, we manipulate stimuli outside of TP to test our first hypothesis. Two additional monitors were aligned on both sides of the main monitor and continually displayed images (e.g., pictures of scenery, buildings, and animals) in 5-second and 10-second intervals that were not related to the story of the animation playing on the TV. The effective field of view (FOV) in humans covers roughly 200° degrees horizontally [
We had announced the study inviting students to participate in it on a South Korean university website. A total of 36 undergraduate and graduate students were voluntarily recruited in this manner.
The experiment used a 2 (side screen interruptions: yes vs. no) × 2 (bezel width: 10 cm vs. 2 cm) balanced, between-subjects design.
Data gathering took place at a laboratory at the university. On the day of the experiment, the researchers explained the experimental procedure and the required time commitment. Participants were assured prior to the experiment that any information provided by them in the survey would be kept confidential. They were also asked if they felt any discomfort participating in the experiment. After each participant gave his/her consent to participate, they were instructed to sit on a chair 150 cm away from a table with a TV (58 cm × 36 cm screen) to watch a 7-minute short animated film (The Passenger;
All procedures in this study were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
In this study, we defined “the virtual world” as the world created through TV and “the real world” as the world in which the viewer actually exists. To test our first hypothesis, we considered visual stimulation through the monitor to be stimuli from reality. That is, when the subject experiences the virtual world through the main monitor, the visual stimuli are made using real-world stimuli through the side monitors. These side monitors were aligned on both sides of the main monitor and continually displayed images (e.g., pictures of scenery, buildings, and animals) in 5-second and 10-second intervals that were not related to the story of the animation playing on the TV.
To test the second hypothesis, we strengthened the stimulus by thickening the bezel width. The bezel thickness of the monitor used in the study was 2 cm, and the bezel’s visual stimuli was produced by applying a black frame to the bezel to produce a monitor with a 10 cm bezel.
In order to test the impact of the increased bezel width, we presented real-sized photos of a 2 cm bezel screen and a 10 cm bezel screen at the same time to the participants and asked them to find the differences; all 20 participants responded that the 10 cm bezel was thicker than the 2 cm bezel.
Telepresence is a basic state of consciousness and fundamental property of consciousness [
Kim and Biocca [
A two-way ANOVA was conducted, with the main screen on which participants were watching an animation (with vs. without side screens playing real-world stimuli) and the bezel width (2 cm vs. 10 cm) as independent variables.
There were no significant effects on the dependent variable of TP by the screen type (no interruption:
However, the type of bezel presence—2 cm vs. 10 cm—had a significant main effect. The participants watching the animated movie on the TV with 2 cm bezels showed higher TP levels (
We examined the relationship between television TP and distraction from the real environment. However, we found that the stimuli from the side screens did not critically influence the subject’s sense of TP. This finding contradicts previously reported results that stimuli from the physical environment reduce TP during the experience of virtual reality [
In human vision, the field of view (FOV) covers approximately 200° horizontally [
In the second experiment, it was found that the level of bezel thickness as an RP factor negatively affects TP when watching TV. Analysis of the cases with the bezel of 10 cm width revealed that participants felt a lower level of TP, and analysis of the cases with the 2 cm bezel revealed that participants experienced a higher level of TP. These findings support prior studies that proposed that TP and RP have a competitive relationship that affects each other inversely as one is weakened or strengthened [
However, there are some possible limitations in this experiment.
First, the sample size was not enough to represent the population of TV viewers—we confirmed that the results for the sample size in the experiment effect sizes [
Another limitation that should be noted is that personal factors of the subjects were not considered in this study. Since the immersive tendency to experience presence is a personal factor related to cognitive competence, it makes theoretical sense that personality variables influence the tendency toward such a state, as well as the motivation to focus upon or attend to the media or task at hand. Viewers can respond differently to the same video images; some viewers are immersed while others are not, hence the importance of considering personal factors (e.g., personality or gender-related differences in the experience of presence) [
Despite these limitations, this study is significant in several ways. First, this study confirmed the importance of “central vision” [
We also found that the bezel negatively affected TP via TV. There have been attempts [
The spreadsheet data used to support the findings of this study have been deposited in the Google Docs repository
The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article.