Multi-Modal Stimulation, Response Time, and Presence

Multi-modal virtual environments succeed better, than single-channel technologies, in creating the 'sense of presence'. We hypothesize that the underlying cognitive mechanism is related to a faster mental processing of multimodal events. Comparing reaction time in uni-modal, bimodal and tri-modal events, we show that the processing speed is: uni-modal > bi-modal > tri-modal. Given this advantage, users of multi-modal VEs start their cognitive process faster, thus, in a similar exposure time they can pay attention to much more informative cues. This results in a more rich, complete and coherent experience and a greater sense of presence.