Immersion, Presence and Transference: Bringing Story Thinking to Simulation Design

Simulation has been used for training since the 1970's. The ability to use skills gained in one simulation outside of that simulation is called transference. Immersion is an important element of transference. Traditional psychological and simulation research defines immersion via fidelity. Gaming literature approaches immersion from a storytelling perspective, and thus focuses on emotional responses which can be reliably measured by physiological signals. Leveraging this game research enhances the simulation researcher's ability to make performance predictions based on simulated results. In this paper, researchers designed an intentionally stressful simulation environment and then tested different display configurations within both stressful and non-stressful environments. Researchers saw a significant difference in responses to display configurations when tested in a stressful environment.