Toward a Cognitive Processing Theory of Player's Experience of Computer Mediated Environments

Abstract

There is a large body of work in psychology demonstrating that aesthetic pleasure is a function of the perceiver's cognitive processing dynamics [6]. The current work aims to develop a theoretical account of the processing dynamics players experience in interacting with computer mediated environments. The present paper integrates the latest theories in Cognitive Science viewing the brain as a Bayesian hierarchical predictive machine, and develops insights into the presence illusion experienced in VR and other representational medium. Clark's [3] Bayesian hierarchical predictive processing theory indicates that reuse and redeployment of existing neuronal circuits would both be expected and would be a common and highly effective method to make (re)use of scarce cognitive resources. In the hierarchical predictive view of cognition, higher levels of the hierarchy have the goal of reducing prediction error on the generated error signals. We propose that users automatically adapt (typically lower) their expectations at the onset of interactions with virtual environments or other computer mediated environments. In the process of interaction, mismatches between expected and actual signals produce prediction errors and lead to jagged processing fluency. Processing fluency is not presence, but presence entails processing fluency.