Carly W. Butler (2008) Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground. Aldershot: Ashgate [Series : Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis]

Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7546-7416-0;
Price : £55.00 ; Online: £49.50

http://www.ashgate.com

Lutz Jancke, from the Neuropsychology lab of Univeristy of Zurich, made an amazing presentation about the reality of VR to our brain. The short answer is for the brain, VR is just another reality; the brain only interprets inputs from its senses and experience, and VR is providing inputs that can be realistic enough to fool the brain. Moreover, VR experiences can shape your brain!

The brain evolves during all your life

The human brain is highly constructive, and constructs reality with the input it gets from the different senses. Perception of our world is a matter of interpretation by your brain of these different inputs.

Studies have been conducted on twins that were separately fostered to know what is the influence of the genes on intelligence. It turns out that only 50% max of your intelligence comes from your genes; this means that 50% of intelligence comes from experience!!

It also appears that much of the grey matter that makes us humans (visual sense, language etc..) is not determined by genes. In fact the brain is largely prepared to learn, it’s a giant learning machine that is able to learn during the whole lifetime of a human. During all your life your brain is restructured based on what you do, what you train at, for example music, juggling etc. But your capacities also decrease when you stop practicing.

Grey matter density can increase with elder people too. Aging doesn’t prevent learning; the cognitive aspects of learning of an elder people is comparable to youths.

[...]

Presence

Studies have proved what we intuitively already knew; even on a simple screen, 1st person view is more immersive than 3rd person.

Another experiment was conducted with a driving simulator. During the ride, a deer or a child would jump on the street in front of the car. It turns out that people didn’t get used to the kid jumping on the street, proving that the brain is working as if the situation was real!

[...]

Conclusion

The brain constructs reality. It is remarkably plastic and matures late, and for him, VR can be real.

The brain can also be shaped by VR experience.

M. Janke states that The Matrix is completely possible; reality is already a virtual world. We interpret reality through the lens of our experience, and if properly created, a virtual environment can seem very real to the brain, with all the positive and negative aspects this can give to its creator.

So let’s use that great possibility for the better!

“I know kung-fu!”

Il post completo è qui:

http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2008/04/16/laval-virtual-2008-how-virtual-is-vr-to-your-brain/

Tempo fa, a Milano, ho visto in un taxi le informazioni sulla tariffazione visualizzate nello specchietto retrovisore centrale… oltre alla curiosità tecnologica, la prima impressione era di un’aumentata “confidenza” con il guidatore, per via dei continui scambi di sguardi

Cmq, da Fabien:

In recent years, the relative market success of in-car navigation systems has symbolized the emergence of location-based services for wayfinding. This market success creates the opportunity to learn from real-world use of current location-aware systems in order to inform the design of future applications. With this aim, we are using an ethnographic approach to study the different ways taxi drivers rely on their navigation system. This work describes how location technologies impact the wayfinding practices and also how practices influence the appropriation of navigation systems. This co-evolution goes from the acquisition and setup of a navigation system to mastering the system shortcomings and limitations. Next, we study the reasons upon which a driver selects among the different modes of a navigation system and the other artifacts and tools (e.g. maps, street directories, landmarks) he or she uses for location awareness and wayfinding. Moreover, we analyze the role of context in this dynamics, i.e., where and when a driver accesses location information from the system, the external supports and the surrounding environment. We present the findings that emerged from 12 interviews augmented by in-car observations within the community of taxi drivers of the city of Barcelona, Spain. This community forms a massive population of early adopters of in-car navigation systems with a strong past practice of relying on mobile technologies and maps to support their work.

Il post originale è qui: http://liftlab.com/think/fabien/2008/04/16/presentation-the-co-evolution-of-taxi-drivers-and-their-in-car-navigation-systems/

Disembodiment in Online Social Interaction: Impact of Online Chat on Social Support and Psychosocial Well-Being

Cyberpsychology & Behaviour, Jun 2007, Vol. 10, No. 3 : 475 -477

Seok Kang, Ph.D.

This study investigates how disembodiment—that is, transcendence of body constraints in cyberspace—in online chat affects social psychological well-being. The results demonstrate that disembodiment is a strong predictor of increased loneliness and depression, and decreased social support. However, the amount of chat use is a positive contributor to decreased offline estrangement and depression, and increased happiness. These contrasting results suggest that online chat use is a technology for social connection used for offline connectivity, but the disembodiment motive is associated with declines in social support and psychosocial well-being. The investigation of specified motives for online interaction, personal competency, or advanced technological alternatives in interaction is suggested for future research on the effects of online interaction on offline outcomes.

Source: Disembodiment in Online Social Interaction
Originally published on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 13:18:12 GMT by Andrea Gaggioli

Field dependency and the sense of object-presence in haptic virtual environments.

Cyberpsychol Behav. 2007 Apr;10(2):243-51

Authors: Hecht D, Reiner M

Virtual environment (VE) users often report having a sense of being present in the virtual place or a sense that the virtual object is present in their environment. This sense of presence depends on both the technological fidelity (e.g., in graphics, haptics) and the users’ cognitive/ personality characteristics. This study examined the correlation between user’s cognitive style on the field-dependency dimension and the level of object-presence they reported in a haptic VE. Results indicated that field-independent individuals reported higher presence ratings compared to field-dependent participants. We hypothesize that field-independents’ advantage in reorganizing the perceptual field and constructing it according to their previously acquired internal knowledge enables them to cognitively reconstruct the VE experience more efficiently by selectively attending only to the relevant cues and by filling in the gap of missing information with their previous knowledge and creative imagination. This active and creative cognitive process may be behind the enhanced sense of presence. In addition, we raise a possible linkage between field dependency, the sense of presence, and simulator sickness phenomenon.

Source: Field dependency and the sense of object-presence in haptic virtual environments
Originally published on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:48:31 GMT by Andrea Gaggioli

Randomized controlled trial of virtual reality simulator training: transfer to live patients.

Am J Surg. 2007 Aug;194(2):205-11

Authors: Park J, MacRae H, Musselman LJ, Rossos P, Hamstra SJ, Wolman S, Reznick RK

BACKGROUND: New Residency Review Committee requirements in general surgery require 50 colonoscopies. Simulators have been widely suggested to help prepare residents for live clinical experience. We assessed a computer-based colonoscopy simulator for effective transfer of skills to live patients. METHODS: A randomized controlled trial included general surgery and internal medicine residents with limited endoscopic experience. Following a pretest, the treatment group (n = 12) practiced on the simulator, while controls (n = 12) received no additional training. Both groups then performed a colonoscopy on a live patient. Technical ability was evaluated by expert endoscopists using previously validated assessment instruments. RESULTS: In the live patient setting, the treatment group scored significantly higher global ratings than controls (t(22) = 1.84, P = .04). Only 2 of the 8 computer-based performance metrics correlated significantly with previously validated global ratings of performance. CONCLUSIONS: Residents trained on a colonoscopy simulator prior to their first patient-based colonoscopy performed significantly better in the clinical setting than controls, demonstrating skill transfer to live patients. The simulator’s performance metrics showed limited concurrent validity, suggesting the need for further refinement.

Source: Randomized controlled trial of virtual reality simulator training: transfer to live patients
Originally published on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:54:27 GMT by Andrea Gaggioli

Alcuni articoli interessanti, trovati questa settimana:

Characteristics of personal space during obstacle circumvention in physical and virtual environments.
Author: Gerin-Lajoie M, Richards CL, Fung J, McFadyen BJ.
Date: 2007-05-01
Gait Posture. 2007 May 16; [Epub ahead of print]
[Link]

Do medical students respond empathetically to a virtual patient?
Author: Deladisma AM, Cohen M, Stevens A, Wagner P, Lok B, Bernard T, Oxendine C, Schumacher L, Johnsen K, Dickerson R, Raij A, Wells R, Duerson M, Harper JG, Lind DS; Association for Surgical Education.
Date:2007-06-01
Am J Surg. 2007 Jun;193(6):756-60.
[Link]

Immersive Simulation Training for the Dismounted Soldier. Final study rept.
Date: 2007-01-01
National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
[Link]

Cybermedicine tools for communication and learning.
Author: John NW, Lim IS.
Date: 2007-03-01
J Vis Commun Med. 2007 Mar;30(1):4-9.
[Link]

Abstract:
We describe a dialogue evaluation plan for a multi-character virtual reality training simulation. A multi-component evaluation plan is presented, including user satisfaction, intended task completion, recognition rate, and a new annotation scheme for appropriateness. Preliminary results for formative tests are also presented.

Abstract:
Combat environments by their nature can produce a dramatic range of emotional responses in military personnel. When immersed in the emotional fog of war, the potential exists for optimal human decision-making and
performance of goal-directed activities to be seriously compromised. This may be especially true when combat training is conducted under conditions that lack emotional engagement by the soldier. Real world military training
often naturally includes stress induction that aims to promote a similarity of internal emotional stimulus cues with what is expected to be present on the battlefield. This approach to facilitating optimal training effectiveness is
supported by a long history of learning theory research. Current Virtual Reality military training approaches are noteworthy in their emphasis on creating hi-fidelity graphic and audio realism with the aim to foster better transfer
of training. However, less emphasis is typically placed on the creation of emotionally evocative virtual training scenarios that can induce emotional stress in a manner similar to what is typically experienced under real world
training conditions. As well, emotional issues in the post-combat aftermath need to be addressed, as can be seen in the devastating emotional difficulties that occur in some military personnel following combat. This is evidenced by the number of recent medical reports that suggest the incidence of “Vietnam-levels” of combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptomatology in returning military personnel from the Iraq conflict. In view of these
issues, the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has initiated a research program to study emotional issues that are relevant to VR military applications. This paper will present the rationale and status of two ongoing VR
research programs at the ICT that address sharply contrasting ends of the emotional spectrum relevant to the military: 1. The Sensory Environments Evaluation (SEE) Project is examining basic factors that underlie emotion as
it occurs within VR training environments and how this could impact transfer of training, and 2. The Full Spectrum Warrior (FSW) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Project which is currently in the process of converting the existing
FSW combat tactical simulation training scenario (and X-Box game) into a VR treatment system for the conduct of graduated exposure therapy in Iraq war military personnel with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Abstract:
Virtual environments (VEs) should be able to provide experiences as rich and complex as those to be had in real life. While this seems obvious, it is not yet possible to create a perfect simulacrum of the real world, so such correspondence requires the development of design techniques by which VEs can be made to appear more real. It also requires evaluation studies to determine if such techniques produce the desired results.
As emotions are implicated in our phenomenological understanding of the physical world, they should also play an integral role in the experience of the virtual one. Therefore, a logical sequence of experimentation to understand how VEs can be made to function as emotion-induction systems is in order. The Sensory Environments Evaluation (SEE) research program has developed a twofold design process to explore if we react to virtually supplied stimuli as we do to the real world equivalents. We look at manipulating both the sensory and emotional aspects of not only the environment but also the participant. We do this with the focus on what emotional affordances this manipulation will provide. Our first evaluation scenario, DarkCon, was designed in this way to produce a strong sense of presence. Sixty-four subjects have been fielded to date and the data is currently being analyzed for results. We hope to find that rich design techniques along with the frame of mind with which a VR experience is approached will predictably influence perception and behavior within a virtual world. We will use these results to inform continuing research into the creation of more emotionally affective VEs.

Abstract:
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is reported to be caused by traumatic events that are outside the range of usual human experiences including (but not limited to) military combat, violent personal assault, being kidnapped or taken hostage and terrorist attacks. Initial data suggests that 1 out of 6 Iraq War veterans are exhibiting symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD. Virtual Reality (VR) exposure treatment has been used in previous
treatments of PTSD patients with reports of positive outcomes.The aim of the current paper is to present the rationale, technical specifications, application features and user-centered design process for the development of a Virtual Iraq PTSD VR therapy application. The VR treatment environment is being created via the recycling of virtual graphic assets that were initially built for the U.S. Army-funded combat tactical simulation scenario and
commercially successful X-Box game, Full Spectrum Warrior, in addition to other available and newly created assets. Thus far we have created a series of customizable virtual scenarios designed to represent relevant contexts for exposure therapy to be conducted in VR, including a city and desert road convoy environment. User-Centered tests with the application are currently underway at the Naval Medical Center–San Diego and within an Army
Combat Stress Control Team in Iraq with clinical trials scheduled to commence in February 2006.

Abstract:
Simulation-based training is increasingly being used within the military to practice and develop the skills of successful soldiers. For the skills associated with successful military leadership, our inability to model human behavior to the necessary degree of fidelity in constructive simulations requires that new interactive designs be developed. The ICT Leaders project supports leadership development through the use of branching storylines realized within a virtual reality environment. Trainees assume a role in a fictional scenario, where the decisions that they make in this environment ultimately affect the success of a mission. All trainee decisions are made in the context of natural language conversations with virtual characters. The ICT Leaders project advances a new form of interactive training by incorporating a suite of Artificial Intelligence technologies, including control architectures, agents of mixed autonomy, and natural language processing algorithms.

URL:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A459155&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Let’s hope….

After the enthusiastic response to First Person, many people suggested that we create a sequel — and we acted on that idea. Today Pat Harrigan and I are happy to announce the publication of a new edited volume: Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (table of contents, Booksense link, ISBN.nu link).

Like First Person, Second Person takes an unusually broad look at our field — and, in order to do so, discusses topics rarely given their due in previous scholarly publications. These range from tabletop role-playing games to improvisational theater, from political games to procedural authorship. The approach is to begin with specifics, and from there build up the insights of game designers, artists, writers, computer scientists, and scholars.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about Second Person in the future. But now, for those interested, I’ll include the book’s introduction below.

---

How should we explain to someone what a game is?

I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: “This and similar things are called ‘games.’” And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is?

But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, aph. 69.

In fact, perhaps too many boundaries have been drawn. There are quite a few attempts to erect borders around the concept of game — especially now that games are increasingly recognized as a major cultural force, and as game studies emerges as an academic discipline.

However, in this volume the contributors are not interested in questions such as “What is a game?” This book is not concerned with questions of center and periphery. Rather, we are interested in questions such as “How is this played?”

For this reason we have adopted the term “playable media” to point toward our overarching concern. This includes games, as well as other forms that “invite and structure play” (Wardrip-Fruin 2005). This volume’s contributors discuss role-playing games, board games, card games, computer games, interactive fictions, political simulations, improvisational theater, massively multiplayer games, locative media, live action role-playing, and more.

Of course, there are a variety of potential topics that one could pursue in relation to these forms. Second Person focuses on two interrelated strands: role-playing and story. These concepts run throughout this book, sometimes in parallel, sometimes in tension with each other. There is not always a happy marriage between something played and something told. If you are an actor in King Lear, Shakespeare has provided you with both a coherent story and a role to play within it — but your freedom of movement within your role is limited by the text. You may hiss or shout or whisper your lines; the director may choose to set the play on a Martian colony and portray Lear as a intelligent shape-changing fungus — but in the end, unless you are Thomas Bowdler, you will say, “My poor fool is dead,” and sink into the fullness of the tragedy.

Conversely, as children you may have played “Cops and Robbers,” or “Cowboys and Indians” (the examples of choice for a generation of tabletop role-playing game Introduction writers). In this case there is nothing to constrain what you say, where you run, who you shoot — but there is also no structure to speak of, nothing to ensure that the person you shoot falls down, that the villains wind up in jail. (This is what Rebecca Borgstrom calls the “nuh unh” factor.) The end of this sort of play, if it can even be said to have an end, is not the ending of a coherent fiction. The events here are arbitrary and contingent, and therefore the opposite of what we call “story.” Beyond this there is the question of how the structures of story differ from one medium to another; telling a story in a novel is not the same as enacting it in a video game. Stories are experienced differently between the tabletop, the computer, and the stage. New forms of media not only require new approaches to story, but may even force us to re-examine our assumptions about how stories are told in more traditional forms.

By design, the subject of most of Second Person’s contributors is, centrally, “you.” This is because you are the person for whom the story is being told, and because the roles discussed in this book will, for the most part, be filled by you. Colossal Cave Adventure, the first computer text adventure, famously addresses the reader, “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” The Cave of Time, the first Choose Your Own Adventure book, announces that, “The adventures you take are a result of your choice. You are responsible because you choose!”* Jeremy Douglass, in his essay here, points out that even the most “first person” of game experiences — the 3D virtual reality that reaches its apotheosis in room-sized CAVE displays — serves the same function as the textual second person: simulated immediacy.**

Outside these caves, tabletop role-playing games speak directly to you as well; to pick only one example, Jonathan Tweet’s Over the Edge tells us:

This game is a coded message. You will decode the message in your dreams and execute its instructions in the spaces between moments of will. Neither you nor I will ever know the contents of the message. (Over the Edge 1997, 2)

The authors, artists, and theoreticians in Second Person address the exigencies of playable media in a number of ways, and in a number of voices. Some essays are informal in tone, some academic, and some highly technical; this polyglot speaks to the varied disciplines from which our contributors are drawn.

For convenience the editors have arranged the essays into three sections.

Section I groups together essays about fictions playable on your tabletop, or in your easy chair, without aid of nonhuman calculation. Many of these, such as the tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) under discussion, have an explicit social component. Some, like Kim Newman’s Life’s Lottery and Eric Zimmerman’s Life in the Garden, can be seen as variations on traditional author-reader expectations.

Section II is concerned with computer-based playable structures. Here are Nick Montfort’s and Jeremy Douglass’s thoughts on Interactive Fiction (IF) and Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern’s in-depth discussion of their interactive drama, Façade. Broadly speaking, the works discussed here are designed to be interacted with by one person: the singular, not plural, “you.”

In section III we return to the social spaces of section I, but in a wider variety of ways. Our contributors discuss the virtual communities of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs, or MMOs); we see how digital media (as well as older role-playing techniques) inform political discourse; and we enter into multiple other theaters as well.

In addition, we have reprinted as appendixes three fully playable tabletop RPGs. Two of these (Puppetland, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) are discussed in essays in this book. The other (Bestial Acts) is also written by one of our contributors, and as it explicitly tries to import Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical concepts into a tabletop RPG format, it may prove somewhat more of a challenge to play, particularly for the faint of heart. These three RPGs provide not only an invitation to play, but demonstrate the wide variation possible in what many people still insist on seeing as a hidebound form.

Our hope is that this book will appeal to a wide variety of audiences. It discusses a number of playable forms, some of which have been unfortunately ignored by the academy, and all of which are important as we seek to understand our fields’ presents and futures. For example, in the last few years there has been much academic discussion of video games and other forms of digital media, but little that acknowledges in any depth the debt many of these forms owe to tabletop role-playing games. Further, it is not too much to say that where academic discussion of tabletop RPGs exists, it is largely cursory — and, not infrequently, wrong.***

At the same time, the hobby game industry (of which tabletop RPGs are a part) has not, as a rule, examined its output in any thorough critical or analytic way — the companies that release RPGs preferring to concentrate on selling product rather than philosophizing about it. There are some exceptions, of course, particularly among the growing indie RPG movement, which we will have more to say about in our introduction to section I.

Second Person does not pretend to provide an exhaustive critical overview of tabletop RPGs, or of any of the other forms that bring together gameplay, roleplay, and story. But we hope it provides a framework for further examination of these forms, by placing these works into a continuum of artistic production and providing a sampling of approaches to them driven by game design, creative writing, and more traditional scholarly frameworks. The next step, as we understand it, is up to you.

—

* The Choose Your Own Adventure series was an outgrowth of Edward Packard’s Adventures of You books.

** In the editors’ opinion, the best novel to engage the VR CAVE technology is Richard Powers’s Plowing the Dark, which makes heavy use of the second person form of address.

*** As an example, an excerpt from Allucquère Rosanne Stone’s The War of Desire and Technology:

The first RPG was published as a set of rules and character descriptions in 1972 and was called, appropriately enough, Dungeons and Dragons. It was an extension, really, of SCA into a textual world. D&D, as it quickly became known, used a set of rules invented by the Austin game designer Steve Jackson called the Generic Universal Role Playing System, or GURPS. (Stone 1995, 68)

While it might be quibbling to point out that Stone has D&D’s publication date wrong (see Erik Mona’s essay for an accurate account of this history), it is harder to overlook the fact that The War of Desire and Technology gets the relationship between D&D and GURPS exactly backwards. It was D&D that inspired GURPS (as it did every tabletop RPG), which appeared more than a decade afterward.

Source: Second Person for Sale
Originally published on Thu, 18 Jan 2007 16:33:42 GMT by noah

CSM 2007 Locomotor Control Platform Presentations: CHARACTERIZATION AND VALIDATION OF VIRTUAL REALITY WALKING SIMULATOR.

J Neurol Phys Ther. 2006 Dec;30(4):195-200

Authors: Deutsch JE, Lewis J, McCall D, Lanin M, Bowlby P, Boian R, Burdea G

Purpose/Hypothesis: Virtual Reality (VR) has been proposed as a strategy for rehabilitation. To measure the potential of new VR devices they need to be characterized and compared to their real world counterparts. The primary purpose of this study was to characterize and validate the gait of individuals who walked on a VR walking simulator (WS) by comparing it to the kinematics and velocity of overground walking. The secondary purpose was to determine if the presence of the virtual environment (VE) modified walking characteristics. We hypothesized that walking velocity would be greater overground and slowest without the VE. Number of Subjects: Ten healthy subjects (2 male and 8 female) ages 24-53 without musculoskeletal injuries or neuromuscular pathology participated. Materials/Methods: Gait step length and velocity were collected (three trials) as participants walked at their self selected speed on a Gait Rite mat. Participants wore a harness and reflective markers on the foot, ankle, knee, hip and trunk. They stood on the WS with each foot secured on a robotic platform, a harness attached to an unweighing frame, facing a screen. Unweighed 40% of their body weight they practiced walking on the WS (2-8 min.) until achieving the criterion gait pattern. Data were collected for four street crossing trials, walk without VE (2), walk with VE (2). An auditory tone or the VE green light prompted participants to begin walking. Kinematics were acquired using a 6 camera Peak system at 60 Hz. Joint angles were calculated for push off and initial contact by averaging the peak angle of three steps. Velocity data were averaged from the xtranslation plots of the fifth metatarsal. Joint excursions from push off to initial contact-loading response were compared to normative data. Differences between overgound walking velocity and step length relative to the mobility simulator with and without the VE were assessed using a repeated measures ANOVA (alpha level= .05). Results: Walking velocity and step length were significantly greater for overground walking (1.5 m/sec; .79 m) compared with the mobility simulator with (.22 m/sec; .17 m) and without (.21 m/s; .18 m) the VE. The average joint excursions on the mobility simulator for push off to initial contact-loading response were 34 (knee) and 18 (ankle) degrees; compared to a range from push off to initial contact-loading response of 22-40 (knee) and 10-20 (ankle) degrees in normal gait. Conclusions: Walking in the VE resulted in pronounced decreases in temporal distance measures of gait however joint excursions were comparable to normal gait. There were no differences in gait velocity, step length or joint excursions when walking on the mobility simulator with and without the VE. The mechanics of the robot limit step length however, changing street crossing time in the VE may increase walking velocity. Clinical Relevance: Selected aspects of gait were preserved in the WS while others were not. Transfer of training from the walking simulator to real world walking still needs to be determined.

PMID: 17233935 [PubMed - in process]

Source: CSM 2007 Locomotor Control Platform Presentations: CHARACTERIZATION AND VALIDATION OF VIRTUAL REALITY WALKING SIMULATOR.
Originally published on Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:54:09 GMT by Deutsch JE, Lewis J, McCall D, Lanin M, Bowlby P, Boian R, Burdea G