Table 1. A glossary of some of the terms used in this paper (alphabetic order).

Active inference	A specific version of PP according to which organisms minimize prediction errors by performing actions that confirm sensory predictions.
Attention	Sensory selective attention operates by selecting (automatically, exogenous att.; voluntarily, endogenous att.) certain stimuli over others. Cognitive and physical resources are allocated by focused attention based on the prevailing task demands. Depending on the kind of activity, these processes can require sustained attention in order to extend over a relatively long period of time.
Enactment	A model according to which cognition and emotions emerge from the continuous interaction between an acting organism and its environment.
Exteroception	Signals originating in the external environment and perceived through the senses.
Flow	A subjective-phenomenal state that can emerge while performing an activity, characterized by intense and focused concentration on the present moment and by perception of the activity as intrinsically rewarding. A crucial aspect for its emergence is the optimal balance between an agents’ skills and the challenge posed by the activity.
Free-energy principle	A formalization of the dynamics according to which organisms resist a natural tendency to disorder by remaining in non-equilibrium states that allows them to adapt to a constantly changing environment. This happens by self-limiting the number of physiological and sensory states in which an organism can be (free-energy minimization). Minimizing free-energy corresponds to explaining away prediction errors.
Immersion	A subjective-phenomenal state characterized by rich sensory stimuli (and often also perceived possibility of action) in a real, virtual, or imagined environment. Sensorimotor immersion is sometimes considered to be a prerequisite, or a constitutive part, of the sense of presence in mediated experiences.
Intention	A formulation of the conditions that must be met by an action to be satisfactorily performed. Intentions can have different extent: Motor-intentions coordinate the simplest motor actions; Proximal-intentions are at the basis of actions directed towards objects, agents, or states in the surrounding environment; Distal-intentions concern actions towards objects, agents, or states in possible (real, virtual, or imagined) worlds.
Interoception	Signals originating in the body and perceived through visceral and autonomic receptors of the nervous system.
Mediation	The use of a physical or symbolic tool (including language) to perform an action: directly on an object (first-order mediation) or to control one or more distal tools to perform an action on an object (second-order mediation; e.g. using a gamepad to control an avatar).
Narrative	Normally conceived as a sequence of events linked by temporal relations. In this paper, we conceive it is a mode of cognition in which temporality is a dominant factor in the processing and organization of perception.
Narrative absorption	A subjective-phenomenal state that can emerge during narrative experiences and that is characterized by a heightened sense of focused attention, transportation into the fictional world, emotional engagement with characters, and activated mental imagery. Similar concepts are “narrative transportation” and “narrative engagement”.
Precision	A measure of the reliability of predictions and prediction errors, which is used to control the relative influence of bottom-up prediction errors and top-down predictions, and the consequent updating of beliefs. Prediction errors with high precision have a greater impact on the reconfiguration of conditional expectations.
Predictive processing (PP)	A cognitive model that conceives perception as (Bayesian) probabilistic inference on the causes of incoming signals.
Presence	A subjective-phenomenal state usually defined as the “perceptual illusion of non-mediation” or expressed metaphorically as the sense of “being there” in some place. Here, we conceive it as the state of perceived successful agency of an embodied mind able to correctly enact its own predictions.
Social presence	A subjective-phenomenal state emerging from the correct enaction of predictions regarding the actions and intentions of other agents. This process reinforces the agent’s self-perception as capable of existing in relation to a continuously changing environment populated, and acted upon, by other agents.