The Effect of Augmented Reality on Involuntary Autobiographical Memory

We know little about the impact of augmented reality (AR) on human cognition, particularly regarding involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM). IAMs are spontaneous recollections of personal events, ubiquitous in daily life but under-researched in both psychology and human-computer interaction. We first discuss the potential opportunities and risks of replacing conventional displays with AR to increase the likelihood of IAMs. We then report on a study investigating whether stimuli displayed on the same mobile device using video-see-through AR are more likely to resurface than those shown with a simple 3D viewer. We found that AR elicits approximately twice as many IAMs in controlled settings with immediate re-exposure to contextual cues, but no measurable effect was found in everyday settings with delayed re-exposure. Therefore, AR can enhance IAMs, but its effects may be modest and short-lived in most cases. Nevertheless, future studies could reveal stronger effects of AR in other settings. Supplementary material is available at osf.io/gscpv/.