Presence is Rooted in the Interactive Perceptual Process

Presence is rooted in the interactive (i.e., enactive) perceptual process (Noe, 2005) and should be viewed from different perspectives: social, psychological, and emotional.

Social presence surfaced in the 1970s when Short et al. (1976) wrote about individuals being seen as “real” when communicating using media. In this case, the amount of presence was based on the type of media used. Today, it is believed that the type of media used has little influence on social presence in online environments. Rather, social presence has more to do with how well individuals participating in online learning are successful in acknowledging or disregarding the presence of the medium (Lombard & Ditton, 1997) and feel a sense of “being together” with others (Biocca et al., 2001) as previously mentioned. 

In the second perspective, according to Lombard and Ditton (1997), presence is a psychological state in which the technology becomes transparent to the user who no longer recognizes it in the learning experience, an illusion in which the technology seems to disappear and people and locations that are in reality separated, perceive and feel that they are present together in the same room.  

The third perspective, emotional presence, is the ability to genuinely show feelings through words, symbols, and interactions with others in the online environment. In this process, learners and instructors are emotionally present when they connect with others in an authentic way during the online learning experience. Throughout the perceptual process, emotions affect our behavior and thought and impact our experiences of presence. Emotions are key to perception; they guide us to focus on particular aspects of a situation, enable us to concentrate on that situation, connect the affective to the cognitive, and allow us to arrive at thoughtful and appropriate decisions for our actions (Alcañiz et al., 2004).

References

Alcañiz, M., Bañoa, R., Botella, C., & Rey, B. (2003). The EMMA project: Emotions as a determinant of presence. Psychology Journal, 1(2), 141–150.

Biocca, F., Burgoon, J., Harms, C., & Stoner, M. (2001). Criteria and scope conditions for a theory and measure of social presence. Paper presented at the Presence 2001: Fourth International Workshop.

Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(2). 

Noe, A. (2005). Action in perception. Cambridge. MIT Press.

Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: Wiley Press.