15.6 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VIRTUAL REALITIES

Already there has been a great deal of theory-building as well as theory-adapting vis-a-vis virtual reality. Theorists have looked to a broad array of sources --- theater, psychology, ethology, perception, communication, computer science, and learning theories --- to try to understand this emerging technology and how it can be applied in education and other fields.

15.6.1. Ecological psychology perspective --- J. J. Gibson

The model of ecological psychology proposed by J.J. Gibson (1986) has been particularly influential in laying a theoretical foundation for virtual reality. Ecological psychology is the psychology of the awareness and activities of indivduals in an environment (Mace, 1977; Gibson, 1986). This is a theory of perceptual systems based on direct perception of the environment. In Gibson's theory, "affordances" are the distinctive features of a thing which help to distinguish it from other things that it is not. Affordances help us to perceive and understand how to interact with an object. For example, a handle helps us to understand that a cup affords being picked up. A handle tells us where to grab a tool such as a saw. And door knobs tell us how to proceed in opening a door. Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things.

Affordance perceptions allow learners to identify information through the recognition of relationships among objects or contextual conditions. Affordance recognition must be understood as a contextually sensitive activity for determining what will (most likely) be paid attention to and whether an affordance will be perceived. J. J. Gibson (1986) explains that the ability to recognize affordances is a selective process related to the individual's ability to attend to and learn from contextual information.

Significantly, Gibson's model of ecological perception emphasizes that perception is an active process(see also 8.5) . Gibson does not view the different senses as mere producers of visual, auditory, tactile, or other sensations. Instead he regards them as active seeking mechanisms for looking, listening, touching, etc. Furthermore, Gibson emphasizes the importance of regarding the different perceptual systems as strongly inter-related, operating in tandem. Gibson argues that visual perception evolved in the context of the perceptual and motor systems, which constantly work to keep us upright, orient us in space, enable us to navigate and handle the world. Thus visual perception, involving head and eye movements, is frequently used to seek information for coordinating hand and body movements and maintaining balance. Similar active adjustments take place as one secures audio information with the ear and head system.

J. J. Gibson (1986) hypothesized that by observing one's own capacity for visual, manipulative, and locomotor interaction with environments and objects, one perceives the meanings and the utility of environments and objects, i.e., their affordances. McGreevy (1993) emphasizes that Gibson's ideas highlight the importance of understanding the kinds of interactions offered by real environments and the real objects in those environments. Some virtual reality researchers (McGreevy, 1993; Ellis, 1991; Ellis, 1992; Zeltner, 1992; Sheridan & Zeltner, 1993) suggest that this knowledge from the real world can inform the design of interactions in the virtual environment so that they appear natural and realistic, or at least meaningful.

Michael McGreevy, a researcher at the NASA Ames Lab, is studying the potential of virtual reality as a scientific visualization tool for planetary exploration, including virtual geological exploration. He has developed a theoretical model of the scientist in the virtual world as an explorer, based on J.J. Gibson's theory of ecological psychology. In particular, McGreevy links the Gibsonian idea that the environment must "afford" exploration in order for people to make sense of it to the idea that we can begin to learn something important from the data retrieved from planetary exploration by flying through the images themselves via immersive VR, from all different points of view. McGreevy (1993) explains:

Environments afford exploration. Environments are composed of openings, paths, steps, and shallow slopes, which afford locomotion. Environments also consist of obstacles, which afford collision and possible injury; water, fire, and wind, which afford life and danger; and shelters, which afford protection from hostile elements. Most importantly, environments afford a context for interaction with a collection of objects.

As for objects, they afford

grasping, throwing, portability, containment, and sitting on. Objects afford shaping, molding, manufacture, stacking, piling, and building. Some objects aford eating. Some very special objects afford use as tools, or spontaneous action and interaction (that is, some objects are other animals) (McGreevy, 1993, p. 87).

McGreevy (1993) points out that natural objects and environments offer far more opportunity for use, interaction, manipulation, and exploration than the ones typically generated on computer systems. Furthermore, a user's natural capacity for visual, manipulative, and locomotor interaction with real environments and objects is far more informative than the tyically restricted interactions with computer-generated scenes. Perhaps virtual reality can bridge this gap. Although a virtual world may differ from the real world, virtual objects and environments must provide some measure of the affordances of the objects and environments depicted (standing in for the real-world) in order to support natural vision (perceptualization) more fully.

Related to this, Rheingold (1991) explains that a wired glove paired with its representation in the virtual world that is used to control a virtual object offers an affordance --- a means of literally grabbing on to a virtual world and making it a part of our experience. Rheingold explains:

By sticking your hand out into space and seeing the hand's representation move in virtual space, then moving the virtual hand close to a virtual object, you are mapping the dimensions of the virtual world into your internal perception-structuring system. (p. 144)

And virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier (1992) has commented that the principle of head-tracking in virtual reality suggests that when we think about perception --- in this case, sight --- we shouldn't consider eyes as "cameras" that passively take in a scene. We should think of the eye as a kind of spy submarine moving around in space, gathering information. This creates a picture of perception as an active activity, not a passive one, in keeping with J.J. Gibson's theory. And it demonstrates a fundamental advantage of virtual reality: VR facilitates active perception and exploration of the environment portrayed.

15. 6.2. Computers-as-Theater Perspective --- Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel (1990a, 1990b, 1991) suggests that the principles of effective drama can be adapted to the design of interactive computer programs, and in particular, virtual reality. Laurel (1990, p.6) comments:

Millennia of dramatic theory and practice have been devoted to an end that is remarkably similar to that of human-computer interaction design; namely, creating artificial realities in which the potential for action is cognitively, emotionally and aesthetically enhanced.

Laurel has articulated a theory of how principles of drama dating back to Aristotle can be adapted to understanding human-computer interaction and the design of virtual reality.

Laurel's (1991) ideas began with an examination of two activities that are extremely successful in capturing people's attention: games and theater. She distinguishes between two modes of participation: (1) first-person --- direct participation; and (2) third-person --- watching as a spectator with the subjective experience is that of an outsider looking in, detached from the events.

The basic components of Laurel's (1991) model are:

1. Dramatic storytelling (storytelling designed to enable significant and arresting kinds of actions)
2. Enactment (for example, playing a VR game or learning scenario as performance)
3. Intensification (selecting, arranging, and representing events to intensify emotion)
4. Compression (eliminating irrelevant factors, economical design)
5. Unity of action (strong central action with separate incidents that are linked to that action; clear causal connections between events)
6. Closure (providing an end point that is satisfying both cognitively and emotionally so that some catharsis occurs)
7. Magnitude (limiting the duration of an action to promote aesthetic and cognitive satisfaction)
8. Willing suspension of disbelief (cognitive and emotional engagement).

A dramatic approach to structuring a virtual reality experience has significant benefits in terms of engagement and emotion. It emphasizes the need to delineate and represent human-computer activities as organic wholes with dramatic structural characteristics. And it provides a means whereby people experience agency and involvement naturally and effortlessly. Laurel (1991) theorizes that engagement is similar in many ways to the theatrical notion of the "willing suspension of disbelief." She explains:

Engagement involves a kind of complicity. We agree to think and feel in terms of both the content and conventions of a mimetic context. In return, we gain a plethora of new possibilities for action and a kind of emotional guarantee.(p. 115).

Furthermore,

Engagement is only possible when we can rely on the system to maintain the representational context. (p. 115)

Magnitude and closure are two design elements associated with enactment. Magnitude suggests that limiting the duration of an action has aesthetic and cognitive aspects as well as physical ones. Closure suggests that there should be an end point that is satisfying both cognitively and emotionally, providing catharsis.

In simulation-based activities, the need for catharsis strongly implies that what goes on be structured as a whole action with a dramatic "shape." If I am flying a simulated jet fighter, then either I will land successfully or be blown out of the sky, hopefully after some action of a duration that is sufficient to provide pleasure has had a chance to unfold. Flight simulators shouldn't stop in the middle, even if the training goal is simply to help a pilot learn to accomplish some midflight task. Catharsis can be accomplished, as we have seen, through a proper understanding of the nature of the whole action and the deployment of dramatic probability. If the end of an activity is the result of a causally related and well-crafted series of events, then the experience of catharsis is the natural result of the moment at which probability becomes neccesity. (Laurel, 1991, p.122)

Instructional designers and the designers of virtual worlds and experiences within them should keep in mind the importance of defining the "whole" activity as something that can provide satisfaction and closure when it is achieved.

Related to this theory of design based upon principles of drama, Laurel has recently introduced the concept of "smart costumes" to describe characters or agents in a virtual world. She has developed an art project, PLACEHOLDER, that features smart costumes --- a set of four animal characters --- crow, snake, spider, and fish (Frenkel, 1994; Laurel, 1994). A person visiting the PLACEHOLDER world may assume the character of one of these animals and thereby experience aspects of its unique visual perception, its way of moving about, and its voice. For example, snakes can see the infrared portion of the spectrum and so the system tries to model this: the space appears brighter to someone wearing this "smart costume." The "smart costumes" change more than the appearance of the person within. Laurel (1991) explains that characters (or 'agents') need not be complex models of human personality; indeed, dramatic characters are effective precisely because the they are less complex and therefore more discursive and predictable than human beings.

Virtual agents are becoming an increasingly important area of design in virtual reality, bridging VR with artificial intelligence(see 19.2.3.1). For example, Waldern (1994) has described how virtual agents based on artificial intelligence techniques such as neural nets and fuzzy logic form a basis of virtual reality games such as Legend Quest. Bates (1992) is conducting research concerning dramatic virtual characters. And researchers at the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation at the University of Pennsylvania are studying virtual agents in "synthetic-conversation group" research (Badler, Barsky, & Zeltzer, 1991; Taubes, 1994a; Goodwin Marcus Systems, Ltd., nd). The virtual agent Jack™, developed at the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation, has been trade marked and is used as a 3D graphics software environment for conducting ergonomic studies of people with products (such as cars and helicopters), buildings, and interaction situations (for example, a bank teller interacting with a customer) (Goodwin Marcus Systems, nd). Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are studying ethology --- the science of animal behavior --- as a basis for representing virtual characters (Zeltner, 1992).

15.6.3 Spacemaker Design Perspective --- Randal Walser

Randall Walser (1991, 1992) draws upon ideas from filmmaking, performance art, and role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons to articulate his model of "spacemaking."

The goal of spacemaking is to augment human performance. Compare a spacemaker (or world builder) with a film maker. Film makers work with frozen virtual worlds. Virtual reality cannot be fully scripted. There's a similarity to performance art. Spacemakers are especially skilled at using the new medium so they can guide others in using virtual reality. (Walser, 1992)

Walser (1991) places the VR roles of spacemaker (designer) and cyberspace player (user) in the context of creative and performing artists, as shown in Figure 15-2.

Figure 15-2. Walser's media spectrum, including spacemaker and cyberspace player categories. (Adapted from Walser, 1991.)

Walser (1992) places virtual reality (or cyberspace, as he refers to VR) in the context of a full spectrum of media, including film as well as print, radio, telephony, television, and desktop computing. In particular, Walser compares cyberspace with desktop computing. Just as desktop computing, based on the graphic user interface and the desktop metaphor, created a new paradigm in computing, Walser proposes that cyberspace is based on still another new paradigm, which is shown in Figure 15-3.

Figure 15-3. Walser's (1992) comparison of the desktop and cyberspace paradigms of media design. invent, communicate, and comprehend realities by "acting them out." Walser explains that acting out roles or points of view is not just a form of expression, but a fundamental way of knowing.

Walser (1992) is particularly concerned with immersive virtual reality. He explains that in the desktop paradigm, computers are viewed as tools for the mind --- mind as dissembodied intellect. In the new cyberspace paradigm, computers are viewed as engines for worlds of experience where mind and body are inseparable. Embodiment is central to cybespace, as Walser (1992) explains:

Cyberspace is a medium that gives people the feeling they have been bodily transported from the ordinary physical world to worlds of pure imagination. Although artists can use any medium to evoke imaginary worlds, cyberspace carries the various worlds itself. It has a lot in common with film and stage, but is unique in the amount of power it yields to its audience. Film yields little power, as it provides no way for its audience to alter screen images. The stage grants more power than film does, as stage actors can "play off" audience reactions, but the course of the action is still basically determined by a script. Cyberspace grants seemingly ultimate power, as it not only enables its audience to observe a reality, but also to enter it and experience it as reality. No one can know what will happen from one moment to the next in a cyberspace, not even the spacemaker (designer). Every moment gives each participant an opportunity to create the next event. Whereas film depicts a reality to the audience, cyberspace grants a virtual body and a role, to everyone in the audience.

Similar to Brenda Laurel, Walser (1992) theorizes that cyberspace is fundamentally a theatrical medium, in the broad sense that it, like traditional theater, enables people to invent, communicate, and comprehend realities by "acting them out." Walser explains that acting out roles or points of view is not just a form of expression, but a fundamental way of knowing.

15. 6.4 Constructivist Learning Perspective - Meredith and William Bricken

Focusing primarily on immersive applications of VR, Meredith Bricken theorizes that virtual reality is a very powerful educational tool for constructivist learning(see 7.3), the theory introduced by Jean Piaget (Bricken, 1991; Bricken & Byrne, 1993). According to Bricken, the virtual reality learning environment is experiential and intuitive; it provides a shared information context that offers unique interactivity and can be configured for individual learning and performance styles. Virtual reality can support hands-on learning, group projects and discussions, field trips, simulations, and concept visualization; all successful instructional strategies. Bricken envisions that within the limits of system functionality, it is possible to create anything imaginable and then become part of it.

Bricken speculates that in virtual reality, learners can actively inhabit a spatial multi-sensory environment. In VR, learners are both physically and perceptually involved in the experience; they perceive a sense of presence within a virtual world. Bricken suggests that virtual reality allows natural interaction with information. In a virtual world, learners are empowered to move, talk, gesture, and manipulate objects and systems intuitively. And according to Bricken, virtual reality is highly motivational: it has a magical quality.

You can fly, you can make objects appear, disappear, and transform. You can have these experiences without learning an operating system or programming language, without any reading or calculation at all. But the magic trick of creating new experiences requires basic academic skills, thinking skills, and a clear mental model of what computers do. (Bricken, 1991, p. 3)

Meredith Bricken points out that virtual reality is a powerful context, in which learners can control time, scale, and physics. Participants have entirely new capabilities, such as the ability to fly through the virtual world, to occupy any object as a virtual body, to observe the environment from many perspectives. Understanding multiple perspectives is both a conceptual and a social skill; virtual reality enables learners to practice this skill in ways that cannot be achieved in the physical world.

Meredith Bricken theorizes that virtual reality provides a developmentally flexible, interdisciplinary learning environment. A single interface provides teachers and trainers with an enormous variety and supply of virtual learning "materials" that do not break or wear out. And as Bricken (1991) envisions it, virtual reality is a shared experience for multiple participants.

William Bricken (1990) has also theorized about virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning(see 24.3), based on the ideas of John Dewey and Jean Piaget. According to him,

VR teaches active construction of the environment. Data is not an abstract list of numerals, data is what we perceive in our environment. Learning is not an abstract list of textbook words, it is what we do in our environment. The hidden curriculum of VR is: make your world and take care of it. Try experiments, safely. Experience consequences, then choose from knowledge. (Bricken, 1990, p. 2)

Like his wife Meredith Bricken, William Bricken's attention is focused primarily on immersive virtual reality. William Bricken (1990) suggests that virtual reality represents a new paradigm in the design of human-computer interfaces. Bricken's model of the new virtual reality paradigm, contrasted with the "old" desktop computing paradigm, is presented in Figure 15-4. This new VR paradigm is based on the transition from multiple points of view external to the human, to multiple points of view that the human enters, like moving from one room to another. Related to this, William Bricken and William Winn (Winn & Bricken, 1992a; Winn & Bricken, 1992b) report on how VR can used to teach mathematics experientially.

Figure 15-4. William Bricken's (1'990) comparison of the desktop and virtual-realty paradigms of media design.

15.6.5 Situated Learning Perspective --- Hilary McLellan

McLellan (1991) has theorized that virtual reality-based learning environments can be designed to support situated learning(see 3.1.2, 7.4), the model of learning proposed by Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989). According to this model, knowledge is situated; it is a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. Activity and situations are integral to cognition and learning. Therefore, this knowledge must be learned in context --- in the actual work setting or a highly realistic or "virtual" surrogate of the actual work environment. The situated learning model features apprenticeship, collaboration, reflection, coaching, multiple practice, and articulation. It also emphasizes technology and stories.

McLellan (1991) analyzes a training program for pilots called Line-Oriented Flight Training (LOFT), featuring simulators (virtual environments), that exemplifies situated learning. LOFT was introduced in the early 1980s in response to data showing that most airplane accidents and incidents, including fatal crashes, resulted from pilot error (Lauber & Foushee, 1981). Concommitently, this data showed that pilot error is linked to poor communication and coordination in the cockpit under crisis situations. So the LOFT training program was instituted to provide practice in team building and crisis management. LOFT teaches pilots and co-pilots to work together so that an unexpected cascade of small problems on a flight doesn't escalate into a catastrophe (Lauber & Foushee,1981).

All six of the critical situated learning components --- Apprenticeship; Collaboration; Reflection; Coaching; Multiple practice; Articulation of learning skills --- are present in the LOFT training program (McLellan, 1991). Within the simulated flight, the environmental conditions are controlled, modified, and articulated by the instructor to simulate increasingly difficult conditions. The learning environment is contextually rich and highly realistic. Apprenticeship is present since the instructor decides on what array of interlocking problems to present on each simulated flight. The pilots must gain experience with different sets of problems in order to build the skills neccesary for collaborative teamwork and coordination. And they must learn to solve problems for themselves: there is no instructor intervention during the simulated flights. Reflection is scheduled into the training after the simulated flight is over, when an instructor sits down with the crew to critique the pilots' performance. This involves coaching from the instructor as well. The simulation provides the opportunity for multiple practice, including practice where different factors are articulated. Related to this, it is noteworthy that many virtual reality game players are very eager to obtain feedback about their performance, which is monitored electronically.

The LOFT training program emphasizes stories: stories of real disasters and simulated stories (scenarios) of crisis situations that represent all the possible kinds of technical and human problems that a crew might encounter in the "real world." According to Fouchee (1992), the pilots who landed a severely crippled United Airlines airplane in Sioux City, Iowa several years ago, saving many lives under near-miraculous conditions, later reported in debriefing that they kept referring back to their LOFT training scenarios as they struggled to maintain control of the plane, which had lost its hydraulic system. The training scenarios were as "real" as any other experience they could draw upon.

Another example of situated learning in a virtual environment is a program for corporate training in team building that utilizes the Virtual Worlds Entertainment games (BattleTech, Red Planet, etc.), featuring networked simulator pods (Lakeland Group, 1994; McLellan, 1994a). This is a fascinating example of how an entertainment system has been adapted to create a training application. One of the advantages of using the VWE games is that it creates a level playing field. These virtual environments eliminate contextual factors that create inequalities between learners, thereby interfering with the actual learning skills featured in the training program, i.e., interpersonal skills, collaboration, and team-building. Thus, McGrath (1994) reports that this approach is better than other training programs for team building. The Lakeland team training program suggests that virtual reality can be used to support learning that involves a strong social component, involving effective coordination and collaboration with other participants. Since both LOFT and the Lakeland Goup training program are based upon virtual environments (cab simulators), it remains to be seen how other types of virtual reality can be used to support situated learning. Mirror world applications in particular seem to offer potential for situated learning.