Reliving VE Day With Schemata Activation

This paper reports some preliminary work on the IntoMyWorld candidate Presence II project. One of the key components of IntoMyWorld is a mixed reality ‘album’ of important events. The album will contain entries which will allow people, for example, to re-immerse themselves in their own weddings or other significant events. Among our first tasks are (a) to understand the salient features and dimensions of events which must be captured and (b) identify the range of environmental cues required to trigger memories and re-immersion. Our psychological position has been draw upon contemporary thinking on autobiographical memory and add to this aspects of schema theory. Schema theory claims that memories are encoded and recalled in structured packets that have ‘slots’ which can store either default or individual values. While psychologists have studied schemata and have experimentally manipulated their formation and recall, we propose to activate them using technology. The IntoMyWorld system will make use of situated, interactive schemata to help trigger memories and with this a sense of being present once more at specific events and places. In this initial work we consider some of the issues in recreating a significant event in the lives of our parents and grandparents, namely VE day – May 1945.