Agency and Presence: A Common Dependence on Subjectivity?

The analysis of agency, a very close concept to presence, is of great help for acquiring insights into how the sense of presence is acquired in the developing child and also about the experience of presence itself. Empirical evidence coming from Cognitive Developmental Research together with the positive outcome of people with autism (who are not generally able to act “as if”) when participating in Virtual Environments suggests that presence is more about ‘experiencing agency’ than ‘Pretending to be there’ or than constructing and reconstructing mental models in real time. It is considered that these phenomena shed some light on the current issues of Presence Research and open up new fascinating philosophical and psychological ones, both in relation to Presence and Autism.