Mixed Reality Monitoring: Investigating Immersive Technology’s Influence on Memory

You might think to yourself, “Did you actually see that? Or was it just something you experienced in Mixed Reality?” 

 There has been a remarkable public adoption of increasingly more immersive technologies over the past few years, prompting XRPeds to conduct a research study evaluating how accurately individuals can distinguish real from virtual objects in the setting of mixed reality environments. 

For instance, the highly anticipated Apple Vision Pro was released to the public in early 2024. This new mixed reality technology enables a novel “passthrough effect,” allowing users to see their actual physical surroundings while engaged in digital content, greatly enhancing the realism of the experience and providing a ripe environment for the creation of false memories. Color, texture, lighting, spatial features have all been enhanced across most immersive technology's platforms as well. As these features become more advanced, this could theoretically confuse a user into thinking the experience occurred in the real world.  

Launching this summer, the pilot study will recruit 30 individuals ranging from 18 to 25 years old to investigate the qualities of virtual objects experienced in mixed reality and how they contribute to the creation of confabulated memory. To do this, participants will engage with a mixture of randomized real and virtual objects and then attempt to correctly identify if the object presented was real, virtual, or new one week after exposure. Surveys assessing participants' impressions of the presented objects, as well as baseline visual-spatial memory and color perception abilities, will be included. The findings from this study aim to enhance understanding of how immersive technologies affect memory processes, potentially informing the design and application of safer and more effective mixed reality environments.