American psychologists have shown that déjà vu can indeed be accompanied by a feeling of predicting future events, but this feeling does not bring real benefit.
Many of us are familiar with the feeling that we are experiencing something for the first time, although we know that this is not related to a specific event in the past. This phenomenon is called déja vu, and it often evokes a sense of prediction: a person may think that he knows what will happen next.
However, as new research by researchers from the University of Colorado has shown, this sense of prediction is just a sensation and does not bring benefits, unlike real memories. The new work is briefly reported by the ScienceAlert portal.
The study involved 74 students. They were "placed" in a three-dimensional world, a kind of first-person VR game. First, they were shown some scenes, with certain decorations (obstacles, surroundings, etc.), and then other scenes with different decorations, but located in the same way as in the first case (for example, the maze was exactly the same, but the walls looked different). The researchers wanted to understand whether the subjects in the second case would develop a sense of déjà vu and with it a sense of prediction. At some point, movement in a given VR environment stopped, and the participants in the experiment had to report whether they were experiencing déja vu and whether they knew which direction to turn.
Examples of experimental scenes.
Approximately 50% of the subjects experienced a sense of prediction along with déja vu. However, as noted, they made the right decision no more often than those participants who made the choice at random.
Thus, research suggests that déjà vu may indeed be related to anticipation of future events. However, this sense of prediction is not really useful, unlike real memories.
The scientific work was published in the journal Psychological Science.
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