An experiment taking place at Iowa State this summer will use the C6 virtual reality laboratory to discover the effect a person’s environment may have on his or her ability to remember facts.

Kenneth Malmberg, assistant professor of psychology, and Dan Peterson, senior in computer engineering, have teamed up with Carolina Cruz-Neira, associate director of the Virtual Reality Applications Center, and Jeff Russell, junior in computer engineering, to create two virtual environments to test context-dependent memory, which is the ability for humans to recall events in the context in which they happened.

Examples of how humans use context-dependent memory are remembering where a person’s glasses were left or where the car is parked, Malmberg said.

The experiment will help determine if a person’s ability to recall facts is affected by environment. A study done by D.R. Godden and A.D. Baddeley in 1974 tested human subjects on land and underwater. The results showed people who were given the facts in one environment and were tested on them in the same environment were likely to recall twice as many facts as those who were tested in a different environment, Malmberg said.

“It would be very compelling if we could match up the results from the original study and our study — with the only difference being virtual reality instead of an actual experience,” Malmberg said.

The experiment will test human subjects by reading a list of words over a loudspeaker. The subjects will then attempt to recall those words later in the same environment or in a different environment.

There are eight different conditions in which the subjects will be tested. These conditions range from using one of the virtual environments to having the subject participate by using a standard personal computer in a normal lab environment, Malmberg said.

There has been very little research on context-dependent memory because it is difficult to manipulate in a laboratory setting, he said. It can be manipulated easily by making small changes to an environment; for instance, a subject may be tested using a blue computer screen one time and a red computer screen the next, Malmberg said.

These types of changes result in small effects. Large effects have been achieved before, but were conducted in an uncontrolled environment. The purpose of this experiment is to find out what type of technology yields the largest effects in a controlled environment, Malmberg said.

“We want to identify one condition where we get really large context effects,” Malmberg said. “That would be a success.”

Russell is participating in the experiment by designing the computer program and the artwork for the virtual environments. He is creating two different virtual environments for the subjects. One is an environment on land, such as a house or a golf course, and the other is underwater. Russell said the subjects will be tested in the environments in the C6 laboratory. The facility is a 10-foot by 10-foot cube, with images projected on all four walls, the floor and the ceiling. The subject is totally immersed in the environment when the door closes, Russell said.

Peterson said this is the first time anyone has used virtual reality technology to study contextual memory. The two virtual environments should be finished by May, with testing to start in the summer.

Malmberg said he is looking for 20 people to act as test subjects. The subject would be required to participate in all eight conditions of the experiment, which would last approximately one hour per condition.