Memory benefit after exploring a novel virtual environment: There is more than spatial novelty

Animal studies show that novelty boosts memory for unrelated information encountered shortly after. Evidence for this effect is lacking in humans. Using Virtual Reality (VR) to simulate spatial novelty has yielded conflicting results. Schomaker et al. found that word recall was higher when encoding followed novel rather than familiar exploration, which we failed to replicate in two prior studies. Instead, we observed enhanced recall after initial VR exposure. This study examined the broader effect of VR experience on memory. As VR could improve memory, we included 35 younger adults and 32 older adults to directly investigate whether the effect is maintained when episodic memory declines. We compared memory performance on word lists encoded after exploring a VR environment, watching a documentary (a more common experience), or completing a control condition that involved no exploration. Recall was better after VR than after both the control condition and the documentary, suggesting that the effects of VR go beyond spatial novelty. Both age groups benefited from the VR effect on memory. The effect of VR on subsequent memory was modulated by novelty judgments: the more participants experienced VR as a novel experience, the larger the memory boost. We discuss how VR could constitute itself another type of novelty that could be taken into consideration in future studies.