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Virtual Reality Creates False Memories
moon_monkey writes "There's an interesting post on NewScientistTech's blog about virtual reality inducing false memories during a recent experiment (pdf). Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington tested students' ability to learn how to use a real digital camera by operating a virtual one. Although those students who used the virtual camera found it easier to remember how the camera worked, they also experienced more 'false memories'. As the post points out, could this be a serious problem for VR going forward?"
So I didn't really lose my virginity? it was just VR? Damn
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Just design it the way they think it should work. Problem solved.
Regardless of whether this happened in reality or a virtual reality it still happend so how are the memories false? Or is this just a matter of distinguishing between real and virtual worlds if so then that makes perfect sense because dreams imo are our own virtual reality and I've had some dreams that I couldn't distinguish between reality when I woke up.
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That's the whole point of virtual reality: be realistic enough to be indistinguishable from reality. The fact that it results in more false memories already is just evidence that we're finally catching up with the goals set for virtual reality decades ago.
Actually, this has appeared in sci fi books for years, and of course did they forget flight simulators, driving simulators, and the umpteen simulators that simulate reality to learn a task? Those have been creating Virtual memories that translate into skills.
Did these guys miss the Matrix?
Even in the movie Total Recall this was beaten to death. And in Do Androids Dream of Elctric Sheep.
So nothing really new here to see, an idea that is more than 30 years old?
Anyway, Arnold beat these researchers to it.
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Before anyone thinks this might be an indication that memories can be "implanted", I think this may be jumping to conclusions just a tad.
The blog post and the preprint make reference to the notion that people who experienced a "virtual" digital camera were more capable with the real thing...but also "remembered" things about it that weren't true, based on questions asked.
I fail to see how this is "inducing" false memories. Could this possibly be a function of the fact that the simulation isn't 100% accurate, and that "false" "memories" about the item (determined by the number of specific or leading questions that are incorrectly answered) would be reduced as the simulation gets more and more close to, well, reality?
Besides, I think we could do a study and prove that plenty of people have "false memories" with regard to the actual capabilities of real devices...
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Or, perhaps the simplest answer...your students are dumb, they couldn't remember all of the instructions 100% accurately and screwed them up. Upon questioning their stupidity they responded "the computer...it...it gave me false memories! TETSUOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!"
Something like that.
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I'm not a psychologist but, if I remember correctly from my psych classes, memories is a lie. The things we remember now are not the actual events from the past. What we remember is basically pieces of the truth that has gaps filled in by our mind. I don't really see the difference from this and normal memory.
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On significant things, like jumping off a ledge and flying; well - we might be able to distinguish between RL and VR in those circumstances.
In bad-analogy-land, if I was to swap a few keys on your keyboard you might find it confusing for a bit, but if I were to paint it green, you'd probably notice (unless it was already green of course).
Of course, where you draw the line between subtle and significant is a whole other argument. But I think the human brain does that already to some extent; remembering important things and discarding irrelevant things.
Serious problem? Doubtful.
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"Memory" is a completely inadequate word to cover all the things we use it for, as if our minds were cameras that recorded our experiences on tape. There are sense memories; emotional memories; recognition memories; navigation memories; skill memories; procedure memories; narrative memories; association memories, and probably dozens more. Memory is not just recall, it has a substantial element of re-creation and imagination.
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In fact, the study leads me to believe that experiences in reality will produce almost as many false memories as the 'object interactive' VR expereinces
"Indeed, scholars argue that although learning via physical experience with a product is vivid, it can create an illusory sense of competence (Hoch and Deighton 1989)"Here, the 'object interactive' VR experiences create more vivid memories than the 'picture site'.
"Likewise, Bartlett (1932) argued that reconstructive memory is more likely to occur with rich than simplified materials because in the former case, individuals are more likely to "fill in" the missing pieces of their memories"What's more vivid than real experiences? Arguably, because people are less familiar with the VR environment, they might be more prone to produce memories so that their minds can make sense of what occurred.
In the end, I believe false memories occur because people have models (conciously or subconciously) of how the world works in their heads. When the experience is richer, the model must be more complex. When the model is more complex, there are more things to not understand/remember. When there are more things to no understand/remember, there are more things to make up to make sense of it all
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Surely "Deja VR" ...
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It is usually just a glitch in the matrix.
No. It is going to create a problem for the concept of memories, which have always been volatile and unreliable, but for some reason are perceived as accurate fact-recall centers in our brain. Something has to force people to adjust how they think of "memories," and this suggests it might be VR.
Research into "flash-bulb" memories (e.g. "I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about the Challenger") has shown that people's confidence in their memory for small details is barely correlated with the amount of detail they actually recall correctly. Elizabeth Loftus's research into eyewitness accounts and false memories have already shown that it is possible to plant even completely false memories with a reasonable success rate, much less small differences in an otherwise real memory like whether a street sign in a video was a stop or a yield, or what specific features a digital camera has.
from the blog: "It wasn't tested, but I assume real experiences don't generate false memories to the same degree."
Actually, I would assume the opposite: allowing people to play with a real camera briefly would have the same effect.
History (dull) is the recitation of factoids that (generally) no one can dispute. However, the factoids have no meaning, and therefore little truth alone.
History (narrative) draws conclusions from the factoids, and creates historical principles. Subject to the caveat that these are only as good as the person drawing the conclusions, these historical principles have much truth, but become open to interpretation.
Contemporary fiction deliberately masks most/all factoids to sculpt a specific scenario necessary to demonstrate an overall truth the writer has noticed.
Scifi creates a subset of specific scenarios by adding new technology and social conventions to create a wider range of scenarios to use as backdrops. The best Scifi demonstrates truths which are not possible in any other genre.
Fantasy is generally an anti-technology subset cross between fictional history and mythology. It too attempts to create additional backdrop scenarios.
VR creates specific events in an alternate space that may only exist for a single specific user. If an external documentation method were used, they might be as 'factual' as any other event, but there may not be any other person able to verify these events.
We'd need a new word to describe the results of what was termed elsewhere 'faulty data processing'.
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In a similar vein, people have beliefs that are just as "false". And there you have the basis for most of humanities problems.
Homo Sapiens brains just don't work right, depending on my definition of right, and you cannot disabuse me of that notion.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
When Chuck Norris kills you in VR, you die in real life, & you remember being killed by him in your next life.
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
That's all fine and good, but now my retarded gardener has developed some kind of strange telekinetic powers - he's going all Dark Phoenix on us!
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