Anne M. Cleary
Anne M. Cleary, PhD is a Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Colorado State University who specializes in the study of human memory. She received her PhD from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2001, and has previously held appointments at lowa State University and as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Cleary is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and of the Association for Psychological Science (APS).
She has previously served as President of the Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science (Division 3 of the APA) and as President of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology and currently serves as an elected member of the APA Council of Representatives Dr. Cleary has published 79 professional articles and book chapters. In addition, she has published three books: The Déjà vu Experience (2nd Edition), Memory Quirks: The Study of Odd Phenomena in Memory, and A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. Her research interests include the study of odd memory phenomena (like having a word on the tip of the tongue and déjà vu), how memory processes modulate attention, and methods of enhancing learning.
Capturing Déjà vu with Virtual Reality
Déjà vu, the eerie feeling of having experienced something before when that seems impossible, has been the subject of many writings and intellectual debates for over 100 years, yet largely eluded scientific investigation until just over a decade ago. The advent of virtual reality enabled a test of a near century old hypothesis of déja vu's origin, that it can happen when an otherwise novel scene shares a spatial layout with a previously encountered scene that was not recalled. The first virtual reality investigation of déjà vu found support for this hypothesis, and follow-up work using this general method has since revealed many other interesting facets of the déjà vu experience. Among these is the finding that, when people are experiencing déjà vu while on a virtual tour of a scene. They often feel that they can predict the direction of the next turn that is about to happen, even when they cannot. They also often feel that they did predict the direction of the turn after the fact, even when they did not, a finding that potentially illuminates the long-known relationship between déjà vu and feelings of premonition. Many other interesting facets of the déjà vu experience have been uncovered in the years since the first virtual reality study of it took place. This talk will cover several new insights that have been revealed about déjà vu using the virtual tour method, and how these insights help to advance understanding of cognition more generally.
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