“Being there” and remembering it: Presence improves memory encoding

Dominique Makowski (1, 2, 3) , Marco Sperduti (1, 2, 3) , Serge Nicolas (1, 2, 3) , Pascale Piolino (1, 2, 3)

1 U894 / UMS 1266 - Institut de psychiatrie et neurosciences
2 UPD5 Psychologie - Université Paris Descartes – Institut de psychologie
3 MC2Lab (URP_7536) - Laboratoire Mémoire, Cerveau et Cognition

Few studies have investigated the link between episodic memory and presence: the feeling of " being there " and reacting to a stimulus as if it were real. We collected data from 244 participants after they had watched the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron. They answered questions about factual (details of the movie) and temporal memory (order of the scenes) about the movie, as well as their emotion experience and their sense of presence during the projection. Both higher emotion experience and sense of presence were related to better factual memory, but not to temporal order memory. Crucially, the link between emotion and factual memory was mediated by the sense of presence. We interpreted the role of presence as an external absorption of the attentional focus toward the stimulus, thus enhancing memory encoding. Our findings could shed light on the cognitive processes underlying memory impairments in psychiatric conditions characterized by an altered sense of reality. " Virtual Reality is the representation of possible worlds and possible selves, with the aim of making them appear as real as possible—i-deally, by creating a subjective sense of " presence " in the user. Interestingly, some of our best theories of the human mind and conscious experience describe it in a very similar way " Thomas Metzinger, " 2016: What do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news? " Edge.org.

Keywords: Presence; Memory encoding; Emotion; Consciousness; Sense of reality; Absorption

Domains: Cognitive science; Psychology; Cognitive science; Cognitive science; Neuroscience

Dominique Makowski, Marco Sperduti, Serge Nicolas, Pascale Piolino. “Being there” and remembering it: Presence improves memory encoding. Consciousness and Cognition, 2017, 53, pp.194 - 202. ⟨10.1016/j.concog.2017.06.015⟩. ⟨hal-01623771⟩