In a new study, researchers conducted experiments where participants had to write a word multiple times, confirming the existence of the phenomenon of déjà vu, the opposite of déjà vu.
- The phenomenon of déjà vu is the opposite of déjà vu.
- Deja vu is the feeling of having already experienced a situation that is new.
- An example of something never seen before is repeating a word several times and finding that it no longer makes sense or having a doubt about it.
Have you performed an action quite often and yet it means nothing to you? This phenomenon, called “jamais-vu”, is the opposite of déjà vu, which is the impression of having already experienced a moment while it is happening.
Jamais-vu: “finding subjectively unknown something that we know to be familiar”
Researchers from theSt Andrews University (Scotland) andUniversity of Grenobles conducted a study on déjà vu. For this work published in the journal Memorythey won the LG Nobel Prizeprize for authors of improbable works that make you laugh, then think.
“Unprecedented is a phenomenon operationalized as the opposite of deja vu, that is, finding subjectively unfamiliar something that we know to be familiar“, explain the researchers. For their experiment, they chose a never-before-seen example: repeating a word several times and, in the case of a never-before-seen word, finding that it no longer makes sense or having a doubt about it. So, they asked 94 first-year psychology students at the University of Leeds, in the United Kingdom, to write a given word 120 times. In total, they had twelve different words to write. Each of them was written in bold at the top of the page.
So that the participants would not be influenced, the scientists did not tell them the real objective of the experiment. The only instruction was to write as quickly as possible. The students could stop if they felt the need but, in this case, they had to indicate the reason to the authors by choosing one of the four options provided: the word seems strange – which is equivalent to the notion of something never seen before for the authors, boredom, hand pain and the like.
The existence of the never-before-seen phenomenon is confirmed
Result: 70% of participants stopped at least once because of something they had never seen before. In total, there were 326 stops. The researchers observed that stopping generally occurred after one minute of writing, after more than 30 repetitions on average.
The 326 stops were justified by the students by selecting one or more descriptions. Thus, 141 (43.3%) opted for “I knew it was spelled correctly, but it seemed wrong.”, 128 (39.3%) for “lhandwriting seemed strange”, 80 (24.5%) “the handwriting didn’t seem real” and 47 (14.4%) “it was like seeing him for the first time”.
In a second phase of the experiment, 120 students had to write “the”. This time, 66% of participants stopped writing because of a feeling of “never seen before”. Thus, the researchers conclude that repetition can make something familiar singular, which therefore supports the hypothesis according to which the never-seen exists.
