Immersion is an important component of effective scenario-based stress training and resilience training for military and non-military government authorities preparing personnel for foreign missions. Numerous studies in the field of stress and resilience training regularly measure (mostly psychophysiological) signs of stress response in the behaviour of the participants, but they do not provide a tool to deduce possible immersion of the participants based on this data. Reliable information about participant immersion could be utilised; for example, to optimise the design of scenario-based training to enhance its immersion and, thus, its effectiveness.
To fill the gap, this research proposes the application of the multi-channel Immersion Analysis System [IAS] for the detection of manifestations of stress response due to emotional, cognitive, and physical load. Furthermore, it proposes a framework to deduce the possible immersion of the participants based on the data collected.
In this study, 10 videos of 10 participants in an interrogation scenario as part of a German federal agency’s 20-hour practical foreign mission preparation training were shown to three coders independently.
By utilising IAS, the coders were able to identify a large increase in behavioural cues for stress response through a comparison between a low- and high-stress phase within the interrogation scenario. Based on this change in the behavioural cues for stress response and based on a subjective assessment of the coders on the immersion of the participants, a framework to deduce possible immersion in the participants has been derived.
Furthermore, the coders found the most-observed dominant emotion in the non-immersed group to be contempt, while the most-observed dominant emotion in the immersed group was fear.
The results indicate that IAS could be utilised to detect spontaneous manifestations of stress response due to emotional, physical, and cognitive load in the behaviour of participants of scenario-based foreign mission preparation training and, with the inclusion of further data (see Section 5), to deduce possible immersion.